Greystar

by C. L. Polk

  Avia turned my hand palm-up, tracing shivering little circles on the palm. “I think I understand.”

  “You did it. You walked away from it all. You knew who you were, and you did what you had to so you could be a reporter. Miles faked his death to get what he wanted most in the world. He knew who he was, and he fought a war to be able to do it.”

  She mulled it over for a moment. “You don’t know who you are, if you’re not Dame Grace Hensley.”

  I let out a breath. “I knew what I was going to be when I was a little girl, and I threw everything into that becoming. I studied. I practiced. Everything I did was in order to become what I am right now. Chancellor. A leader. But I wish…”

  Avia reached out. We slipped into each other’s arms, skin-warm and close.

  “I don’t know. I wish I had something that wasn’t Dame Grace Hensley. Something that wasn’t my father’s daughter. Something that was mine, only mine.”

  “And if you had that thing,” Avia asked, “would you give up everything for its sake?”

  She waited patiently while I thought. Give up everything? What would be worth more than Aeland? Even thinking about it made me quiver with fear. “No.”

  “Then maybe that is what’s yours,” Avia said. “Maybe that’s who you are. But does it mean that you are the successor to the Hensley legacy?”

  I puzzled over the difference. “I need to think about that.”

  “All right,” Avia said. She wriggled a little closer. “Close your eyes. It’s already Firstday. We both have work to do.”

  * * *

  I woke with Avia’s head resting on the crook of my shoulder, my arm curled around her ribs. She looped one arm around my body, hugging me as if I were an enormous stuffed toy.

  It should have been an agony of numb arms, but we’d slept comfortably, just like this. Fitted together, close and familiar. I didn’t want to move. I wanted to stay right there, warm and embraced, breathing in the smell of the rose-scented wash she used on her hair and the last herbal whiffs of a fougère for men blended with her skin.

  I refused to think about how I would sleep alone again after this. Being with her seeped into my skin, warm and soft and quietly euphoric. I breathed in time to the rise and fall of her chest; I marveled at the smooth, peaceful beauty of her face at rest. I was hers to sleep on, unwilling to move while she was comfortable and safe.

  At some point I closed my eyes. The next thing I knew, Edith had come in with a pot of chocolate and started preparing for my morning toilet. She turned on the water in the shower to exactly the right temperature, and then her footsteps back paused before a wardrobe to sort through my outfits.

  Avia raised her head from my shoulder. “It’s five already?”

  I had been released from my duty. “Good morning. Have some chocolate.”

  “Mm.” She sat up and blinked at Jane, who offered her a tiny cup. She took it and sighed. “Is there coffee?”

  “At breakfast downstairs.”

  Avia savored her cup of chocolate as if she hadn’t had one in a long time. Edith led the way to the bath chamber and left me to wash and wrap up in a dressing gown. When I returned, my usual choice of three outfits lay on one half of the bed, while the other held ensembles for Avia, who almost ran in her haste to get in the shower.

  I regarded the outfits, but really I was looking at the effect—hers on one side, mine on the other. Could it be like this every morning, instead of just one?

  “Should I try new changes, ma’am?” Edith asked.

  “My apologies,” I said. “I was just thinking.”

  She darted a glance at Avia’s side of the bed, and at Jane, who had coated one of Avia’s shoes in tarry black polish. “I can change any of these ensembles, ma’am, if you need something more—”

  “My black wool suit,” I said. “The one with the gray pinstripes.”

  “Very good, ma’am. Your orange tie?”

  I nodded, and Edith turned me to face the mirror while she combed and wave-set my hair. She left me broiling under a hooded dryer stand with the housekeeper’s report, including staff shifts, my schedule, the week’s menu, and a polite inquiry about Avia’s diet and preferences. I balanced a lap desk on my knees and made amendments to the report. Beads of sweat rolled down my temples. My ears were burning hot.

  I endured it. Avia emerged from the bathing chamber and moved out of my sight to pick an outfit. The noise of the windup fan muffled any conversation.

  When Edith released me, Avia was dressed in a slip and stockings, sitting perfectly still while Jane applied her cosmetics. I turned to Edith’s attentions, obeying all her directions as she powdered my face. After she had dressed me, I turned to regard Avia, clad in a slate-gray dress with a bell-shaped skirt and a ribbon bow on the neckline. Her hair gleamed, and her mouth was lined in red, waiting until after breakfast to be filled with her favorite shade of fresh-blood lipstick.

  We took breakfast on trays in the library: coffee and eggs cooked to the precise moment where the whites cooked solid but yolk still ran, oozing and golden on buttered toast. Goose sausage, slices of cheese, and wedges of sugared oranges filled my plate.

  Avia spent the better part of five minutes gaping at a painting. A woman dressed in the gleaming silk and lace excess of the twelfth century sat on an ornately carved divan, her hand captured by a gentleman in an orange coat that strained to stay buttoned over the years around his middle. While the gentleman devoted himself to kissing the woman’s knuckles, she gazed over the gentleman’s head at a soulful-eyed youth with long, curling dark hair and a plump, pink mouth.

  “That’s A Better Bargain Than Marriage,” Avia said.

  I swung my coffee cup away from my mouth. “Yes.”

  “It hung in the National Art Exhibition in Merrymonth. I took pictures of it.”

  I glanced at it. “Yes. That’s supposed to be Bernard Hensley and Phillida Carrington, and of course her favorite lover, Eustace Harvey.”

  Avia’s cup rattled as she set it on its saucer. “It’s a Briantine.”

  “One of his juvenile works,” I said. “Do you want to borrow a book?”

  “Do I want to— No, thank you. I have one.” She turned back to her plate and her swiftly cooling eggs. “What do you read during breakfast?”

  I held up a copy of Salterton’s Hansard from 1541. “Work.”

  She wrinkled her nose and pulled out a battered penny-book novel. “Miss Endicott is busy trying to choose between two suitors—the handsome man whom her parents adore, and the tempting, slightly wicked Diana who has jilted lover after lover after becoming a widow so soon after her marriage.”

  “That sounds more interesting than a word-for-word transcript of Parliamentary bickering.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Avia said. “They used to fight sword duels over policy, didn’t they?”

  “Great-Grandmother Fiona put an end to that,” I said. “Now it’s just underhanded subtext and debate as a sport.”

  We opened our books, reading while we ate. I familiarized myself with the transcripts of the final debate and vote of the Witchcraft Protection Act.

  The committee was right. The Cabinet had voted in a law based on the most questionable evidence, and I noted the yeas and nays. I found Grandpa Miles had voted in favor, indicating King Nicholas’s wishes. My father had voted to follow the Chancellor, as did every one of the men and women who were the first shareholders of Aeland Power and Lights. It was sickeningly obvious. They had jumped up a bad law to further their obscene scheme, making a fortune on the backs of imprisoned, enslaved witches.

  Who had voted in the Lower House? I flipped back, looking for the relevant entry, when Avia’s fork clattered on the rim of her plate.

  I looked up. “Are you all right?”

  She was back to staring at that painting. “I had imagined that coming here would be like returning to my past, in a way.”

  I imagined breakfast in the library of the Jessup house. What did they read
over breakfast? Was it pleasant and peaceful?

  Avia’s mouth thinned as she concentrated on her half-eaten toast. I waited for her to speak, but the silence went on too long. “Was it?”

  “I was a fool to think so,” Avia said. “Your maid dressed me. Our lady’s maid put out the clothes and the washing things, but she never did it for me. And this house…” Avia glanced up at the wall. “You have masterworks on the walls. As if they’re just another kind of belonging instead of something you only see in a museum.”

  “It’s a collection that spans multiple generations.”

  She flicked her free hand at it. “It’s a Briantine.”

  “One of his earlier works.”

  “It’s still worth enough marks to buy my whole building. And fix it. And rent to a better class of tenant.”

  I didn’t know what to do. What would Miles do? Try to understand her feelings. “It bothers you.”

  “It discourages me,” she said.

  “Why?”

  Avia cut off whatever she was going to say. “You’ve been very kind, inviting me here, and doing what I needed so I could feel safe enough to sleep. I don’t want to throw that hospitality in your face.”

  “But?”

  “Nothing.”

  I closed my book. “Tell me.”

  But she still didn’t speak. She shook her head sadly as she looked at the painting. “All this money makes sure you can’t see the truth of Aeland.”

  I gasped. “How can you say such a thing?”

  “Because I fell from a very great height—and even then, your place is miles above where I once stood,” Avia said. “It took me months to open my eyes after I left home. I stomped off and let an apartment in Wellston Triangle.”

  “But you don’t live in Wellston Triangle,” I said. “What happened?”

  One corner of Avia’s mouth curled up. “My father closed my bank account. I lost my apartment, they took the furniture, and I went east until I wound up in a tenement.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know why you fought with your father.”

  “I wanted to be a photographer. He wanted me to marry a transportation company.”

  I understood that. My father wanted me to marry eleven votes in the Cabinet. “And that’s why you wore red that night. To say no.”

  Avia nodded. “I knew I was good enough for the papers. I was right about that. And I knew once I earned my byline, Father would want to reconcile. I was right about that too.”

  “But you didn’t go home,” I said. “Why?”

  “Because it isn’t fair,” Avia said. “It’s not right. The people of Aeland are exploited, and every time they try to improve their lot, the bosses and the politicians find a way to knock them down.”

  I had seen promising acts wither in the House with my father in the Chancellor’s seat. But that could change, easily. “I can help you. Those politicians? They answer to me.” I was on solid ground again, and I lifted a hand as I spread the warm air from the fireplace around the library. “I can make things better.”

  “With laws and policy.” Avia nodded wearily. “You’ll start out with a proposal, and in negotiations, the law that comes out will be feeble compared to what the original bill had planned.”

  “We work out compromises—”

  “It’s not good enough, Grace. You’d have to legislate radical, sweeping change—and you can’t get that past the House.”

  “A step forward is still a step.”

  Avia smiled. It stretched her lips as she conceded. “You’re right. But do we have time for steps hobbled by compromise?”

  I knew she didn’t think so. And maybe she was right—the Amaranthines were deathless, but that didn’t mean they wanted to live here while we inched forward, fighting progress as hard as we could. We had to do something big. Something clear-eyed and bold.

  “I have to find a way to convince the Queen.”

  “And if you can’t?” Avia asked. “What will you do if you can’t?”

  I dropped my gaze. “Something else.”

  “And what will that be?”

  I raised my head. I didn’t even try to hide my conflict. “Anything else is treason.”

  Avia stopped talking. She picked up her coffee, had a sip, and gave me time to repair my poise.

  “Maybe this is the moment when you find out what you want more than anything else in the world,” Avia said. She set down her cup and popped open a compact, filling in her lips with red. “Thank you for breakfast. I’m going to ride into work. Do you still have an idea where to stash me?”

  I nodded. “I’ll have an address for you by noon.”

  “Thank you. I know you didn’t have to do this. And I didn’t mean to—” She glanced at the painting again and sighed. “We were having such a nice morning.”

  Her shoulders slumped. But she drew herself back up and walked out of the library, shoulders back and head high.

  I listened until I couldn’t hear her footsteps any longer, then rang for a footman. Avia’s life was still in danger, and I was still certain I knew who wanted her dead.

  SEVENTEEN

  The Promise of Destruction

  As I reached the topmost stairs in the Tower of Sighs, I heard the rush of many wings. I emerged to behold Father smiling at a flock of birds greedily pecking at seeds scattered across the floor. I counted sparrows, scarlet jays, one plump messenger dove, and winter thrushes. Father had a black-capped chickadee on his finger, sending the little passerine into bliss at being preened and petted. His own breakfast sat half-eaten, shoved across the table next to unopened newspapers.

  He caught sight of me and shooed the little bird away. “Grace.”

  Loose feathers floated in the dusty air. “You tried to kill Avia Jessup last night.”

  “You invited her to the ball as your guest. After I told you to—”

  “You don’t tell me anything, Father. You don’t get to push me around the game board. I am Chancellor. I am the Voice. I am the one who decides who is valuable to me—and you are depreciating your worth.”

  “You little fool,” Father said, his voice as placid as a still pond. “She knows everything. Everything, do you hear me? There was a manuscript—”

  “I know all about that,” I said.

  Father stood up, and birds startled, wings beating. “Then why is she still breathing?”

  “Because she’s helping me.” How did he know? How?

  He must have subverted a guard. He had all the time in the world to buy one. Just to send messages on to the person who did the real mayhem. But who among the guards obeyed his orders?

  “You have vision, Grace. You’re capable of looking into the distance where others keep their eyes on the path just ahead. You have to forget these stopgap measures and look at the long game.”

  My scalp prickled as if fire raced across it. “If you’re so good at this game, Father, why are you waiting to see if cancer or the noose gets you first?”

  He cocked his head. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

  That was a bluff. “I think you’re meddling. I think you don’t know how to let go. And I think it’s time that stopped. I have a country to save, and you’re getting in the way.”

  Father was the picture of calm. “And how will you put me out of the way?”

  “A word with the Queen should serve.”

  Father smiled. “And then when she tries to find my coconspirators? When she discovers that Severin has been making regular visits to my cell?”

  She’d be furious, of course. She already hated how Severin opposed her, no matter how gently he did it. If she knew Severin was meeting with the main instrument of the conspiracy that had the Amaranthines weighing our fate, she could do the worst. She could denounce him. She could accuse him of treason. And that would leave Aeland without an heir.

  An heirless throne would bring the landed into the picture as they squabbled over who had the strongest lines of descent from Queen Agnes. There wou
ld be no clear candidate. The struggle would be inevitable.

  Father nodded. “You see now.”

  I couldn’t handle the intricacies of a brawl over succession on top of everything else. I couldn’t risk taking Severin out of play, and Father knew it. But I would go to chaos before I stood by and let Avia die. Father only valued one thing. All my leverage depended on convincing him I would destroy it just to spite him.

  “You tried to kill Avia Jessup. You failed. She knows exactly who arranged to rob her home. In exchange, I told Avia to print her research on the founding of Aeland Power and Lights.”

  He stared at me from under the low, angry line of his eyebrows. “That will smear this family.”

  “That’s the point.” I unfolded my arms and squared off, hands on my hips. “Let me make this clear, Father. Avia Jessup is off-limits. I am guarding her life. And every time you try to hurt her, I will be there to protect her. And then I will tell her something that brings the Hensleys down. What shall I tell the papers the next time you get in my way? Attempt murder again, and you’ll find out.”

  “It’s your family too.”

  “It is. But I will disgrace you, Father. I will pull Grandpa Miles off his pedestal. I will make sure the two of you are remembered with contempt. Stay away from Avia Jessup.”

  “You ungrateful little fool,” Father said, his voice soft.

  “I have things to do, Father. Goodbye.” I turned my back and strode to the stairs. “Finish your breakfast.”

  * * *

  “Grace.”

  That single word pulled me out of my ruminations. I was on the main floor of Kingsgrave Prison, having automatically made all the turns and choices that brought me to the heavy-doored cells where prisoners were held in isolation. There Miles waited, one eyebrow raised as I came not from the south end of the hall, the way that connected Kingsgrave to the rest of the palace, but from the north, from the Tower of Sighs. Miles gazed at me with the downward-turned mouth of disappointment, and it struck me in the heart.

  “You were up there, weren’t you.”