Greystar

by C. L. Polk

We went right instead of left, and a few steps later I was inside the reception room of Severin’s office. A recording of the principal soprano of A Strand of Stars for Your Hair singing a difficult passage made me groan in pain.

  “Turn that off,” he said, and the windup audiophone went silent. “Just a little farther. You can do it.”

  A secretary rushed ahead of us and opened a door. Behind it, Severin’s sitting room waited to serve his comfort. A black-and-white carpet, bold with interlocking circles and squares, lay spread beneath white leather sofas gathered around a leaping fire. Severin helped me to one and stuffed cushions beneath my knee, letting it rest while slightly bent. Severin’s book of meditations and a pen rested on the low table next to the sofa. What had he written? No one was ever supposed to look inside. The writings in one’s Book were sacred communications with the Makers. They were private.

  That book made my fingers itch.

  “Don’t move.” A fringed rug of royal purple silk settled over my legs, and he crossed to his sideboard. “You have a light-headache.”

  “Yes.”

  He plucked up a blue bottle and poured a familiar treacle-dark liquid into it. I caught the whiff of Samuel’s Mixture as he brought it to me. I quaffed it, hoping this time I’d swallow it so fast I didn’t have time to taste it.

  No such luck. I tried to straighten my leg and gasped. “Oh, the deuce! This hurts!”

  “Like someone slowly crushed it.” Severin moved away, raising his voice to be heard. “Just give your knee time to rest. You can rub it. It makes it hurt more, but it feels like you’re doing something.”

  It did, but somehow it was better. I rubbed, and it hurt, and I kept rubbing.

  Above me hung an arrangement of photographs. Severin was in all of them, standing with one beautiful woman after another. The Prince posed with opera sopranos, principal dancers, and the divine stage actress Hyacinthe Chalk, who would neither confirm nor deny the rumors that they enjoyed a tender friendship. I suspected they had, but I wouldn’t stoop to celebrity gossip.

  Severin came back into view with two bags of ice. He handed me one, and the cool soothed my knee. I took the other and put it on my head. I sighed in relief. “You know this punishment.”

  “Intimately. I once suffered it in front of your father.” He huffed out a laugh. “How did you work out how to time Sir Ysonde’s arrival?”

  “I didn’t,” I said. “That was pure magic.”

  “Or the Makers on your side,” Severin said. “I am sorry I didn’t hear about Mother’s plan to spring the new Cabinet on you. I dropped in to warn you, but you were gone.”

  I sank into the black and gray pillows cradling my head. “I was with Member Clarke.”

  “And the Grand Duchess?”

  I nodded and regretted it. “She wanted to leave the palace. I obliged her. But the new Cabinet is a disaster. They’ll strike down the prorogue in a heartbeat.”

  Severin perched on the edge of the sofa, sitting near my hip. “They might not even get the chance. Mother might intercede and strike it down before the matter even reaches them. Either way, it’s doomed to fail.”

  “It can’t.” I shielded my eyes with one hand. “Everything will go straight to blazes if we don’t free the witches.”

  “We need it to fail,” Severin said, “if we’re to get what we really want.”

  I lifted my hand from my eyes. “You want it to paint the Queen in a bad light. To turn the people against her, specifically. But the Amaranthines—”

  “Will be lenient, if we act swiftly.”

  I caught my breath. The promise I had made in Kingsgrave Prison—this was how Severin wished to use it. “There will be rioting.”

  “I know. We will quell those riots by overturning the old order. I’ll begin my reign by rooting out the corruption of the old guard, just like you said. Then when we release the witches, they will blame dead traitors, not us.” Severin’s dark eyes were alight with the plan. “We can do this, Grace. We can save Aeland.”

  How many people had quietly hinted that they wanted this? Enough of them to ensure a smooth transition from one crowning to another. I had told Constantina we had to walk a very narrow path. This one was even more dangerous. But it was our best chance. We could survive it all, if we pushed the right story, with the handsome, charismatic Prince acting out of love for his citizens. I lifted my hand away from my eyes. Outside the tall windows, a mottled gray messenger dove lighted on a feeding platform and pecked at millet.

  “We need your support of the prorogue on record,” I said. “If you talk to Avia Jessup, she can interview you. She takes wonderful pictures. I can get her here tomorrow.”

  Severin glanced up at the gallery of photos. “What time?”

  “It will have to be in the morning, if we want to make the afternoon deadline. Ten o’clock?”

  “I think I can have everything arranged by then,” Severin said. “This plan depends on you taking a strong personal stance against Constantina, emphasizing your support and her disapproval. We need the vote in the Lower House to be the one everyone hopes for, so when it fails, we’re the heroes the people need.”

  A coup. We were planning a coup. It was what was best for Aeland, but that didn’t stop the constriction of my breath or the wobbling, fluttering fear that raced around me. “I wish the timing was better. This headache? It’s a storm warning. We’re about to get a full cyclonic blizzard again.”

  “Again?” Severin asked. “That’s so soon.”

  “I fear it might be like this all winter. I have to plot its progress and calculate when the Invisibles will need to do the ritual.”

  “Then you should go home,” Severin said. “Get a good rest in.”

  “There’s too much to do.”

  “You’ll get a bit of a reprieve,” Severin said.

  I squinted at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean Mother will be angry with you. Toweringly angry. She’ll probably denounce you as her Chancellor.”

  I bit my lip. That wouldn’t help me with the Storm-Singers. Not one bit. “But if I’m not Chancellor, I can’t help.”

  “It won’t be for long.” Severin clasped my hand, squeezing it gently. “I can’t imagine running this kingdom without you. I need you by my side. You’ll only be out of play for a short time.”

  Inside I was screaming. I squeezed Severin’s hand in return. “But if I’m not here, how can I—”

  “The Amaranthines will demand your presence. You were right, earlier today. It’s the people on one side, and the Deathless on the other, and I’m going to use them to crush Mother’s rule. Trust me, you won’t miss a thing.”

  TWENTY

  Birdseed

  I stayed long enough to reassure a worried Janet and write to Avia care of the Star. I asked her to meet with me and the Prince the next morning—me at nine, to brief her, and then the Prince would join us at ten, to give her the real story.

  To brief her. I couldn’t even pretend to believe that. I watched for the sight of Tristan’s townhouse as William and George took me home, my hope leaping as I saw the lights shining in the windows. I wanted to stop and determine if she was well, but I couldn’t selfishly reveal where she hid from my father’s assassins. I couldn’t stop, even if I trusted my driver and footman implicitly.

  I ate supper and surrendered myself to Edith, who knew everything that worked to ease my headache. She dosed me with tonic, washed my hair with lavender-sweetwood shampoo, served me the blandest food to avoid a spice that might prolong the pain, barred chocolate and wine from my diet. I could not read, or do any correspondence, though I did win five minutes with my amanuensis, instructing him to write a message to every member of the Invisibles. Warning of the new cyclone sent, I lay alone in my bed, breathing in the incense that promoted peaceful sleep.

  I dreamed of storms and woke alone. I went down to breakfast and gazed up at the painting of my many times great-uncle Bernard. I tried to see it as Avia had until my
eggs grew cold. I huddled in the back of my sled, watching all the people who had yellow ribbons fluttering on the sleeves of their coats. William handed me out of the sled, third in line behind two bright green cargo haulers stuffed with sacks of mail.

  I tilted my head. Just how much mail did Government House get in a day? Much more, with the telephones out of service, but two cargo sleds’ worth, for the 7:00 a.m. post?

  Sleigh bells jingled behind me. A third cargo sled parked behind us, loaded with sacks of mail. A mail carrier jogged down the steps from Government House, circled to the back of the sled, and hoisted a sack over his shoulder, again climbing the steps to the entrance.

  I stopped the mail carrier behind me. “Excuse me, do you also have a sack of letters bound for Government House?”

  She squinted, as if she needed spectacles. “They’re all for Government House, ma’am.” She said it like “mum,” the way Riversiders did, taking in her sled and the other two with a sweep of her arm.

  I blinked. “All three sleds? Is this normal?”

  “Not at all, ma’am,” she said. “One, maybe two bags at seven. More at ten. But this is more mail than I’ve seen in one place.”

  What in the world? “Thank you,” I said, and hurried inside.

  A full sack of mail rested outside my office door. Inside, Janet stacked envelope after envelope from a second sack, trying to sort them all into categories. Her silver-streaked hair was coming loose of its bun, wisping all around her head.

  “What is this?” I asked. “Janet, what’s happening?”

  “All these letters are from constituents,” she said. She slit open an envelope with the loopy handwriting of a child and pulled out a single folded page. “They’re all about freeing the witches, so far. Some of them are heartbreaking.”

  She handed me a letter from a stack, and I unfolded it to read:

  Dear Chancellor Hensley:

  Auntie told me to write what it was like to hide. It makes me sad. I can make plants grow. If I could tell people, then I could make everyone’s plants grow and tell them when they have cutworms and bad beetles and help them grow lots of food. But I can’t tell anyone because they’ll take me away and I’ll never see my family again.

  Sincerely,

  Anonymous

  That signature had halting spots where the pen paused before writing the next letter.

  “This is from a child,” I said.

  Janet nodded. “That’s a heartbreaking one. Some of them are blisteringly rude.”

  I took a stack of letters Janet had sorted and sank into reading them. I read the story of a boy who could heal animals and who had “a good job” but couldn’t say what it was. I read a letter from a mother who cried the first time she realized her child was speaking directly into her mind, because her child was too young to know that their talent wasn’t safe. I read about a girl who was in love with a boy who didn’t have witchcraft, and how her parents forbade her to be with him, because the risk of discovery was too great.

  We had hundreds in each asylum. Kingston sheltered thousands more, living small and in fear. I sat surrounded by letters when Avia stepped inside, lifting her camera to capture the sight of me and my staff reading letter after letter, sorting them into piles.

  “The Star’s been buried in them,” Avia said. “Whoever organized this is a genius.”

  I extricated myself from the sofa. “I’m glad you came. Do you want coffee?”

  “Please.” Avia sighed. “The Star’s run out. We’re on rebrew.”

  I stopped at the potbellied silver urn and poured us each a cup, aromatic and dark. Avia took hers black. We were nearly out of sugar anyway. She followed me into my office, smiling as I stirred the air to spread the heat from the fireplace around the room.

  “One day, I want to watch while you make it rain.”

  I barely had to consult my senses. Clouds hung heavy and low in the sky, their bottoms dark with unfallen snow. I pointed out the window, and Avia watched as tiny flakes danced in the breeze.

  “Are you doing that?”

  “I am,” I said. “Though it’s going to snow for real in a few hours.”

  Avia watched out the window, her coffee cupped in both hands. “How does it work?”

  “I can feel it. You feel it too—cold, warm, humid, dry, windy. It’s only I feel it more strongly, with finer details. Like a tailor who knows their cloth with a look and a touch, I suppose.”

  “And you can tell when a storm is coming, like last week.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Like last week. Like now.”

  She turned to examine me. “Another storm is coming?”

  “It’s a bad one,” I said. “Vicious. Tell Mrs. Sparrow to stock up the house. She has about three days before it hits.”

  “That makes my story more important than ever.” Avia pulled a file from her satchel, and I opened the familiar goldenrod-colored paper cover to find a typewritten article headlined “The Hundred Witch Families—How Aeland’s Elite Kept Their Power a Secret.”

  Cold trickled down my spine. Were we ready to reveal this so soon? I scanned the neatly typed page and read Avia’s crisp style detailing the facts: that what we had characterized as one of the most common delusions of witches, the one guaranteed to prove that they were already surrendering to a loss of reason, was in fact true and that the most powerful families of Aeland—the wealthy, powerful, insular members of the Hundred Families—were witches themselves.

  Then the article introduced me, giving a biography of my life and a romantic account of how I could command the elements of air and water, to make the weather do what I willed it. I read all the way down to the line “Grace’s interview goes here” before I shut the folder and dropped it with others just like it, piled on my desk.

  Avia set down an empty coffee cup. “I wanted you to see it first.”

  “You want me to just tell it.” I lifted my hand to cover my throat. “Not an anonymous source. Me, admitting the truth.”

  “I think it’s our next move,” Avia said. “I want to run it in the morning edition on the day of the vote.”

  Oh Solace. I trembled all over. I could barely breathe. If I did this, I could kiss my place as the Voice goodbye. I was guaranteed to lose my seat as Chancellor. I’d be poison to the touch. Maybe even too much for Severin to handle.

  But maybe it would work. Maybe I could use my notoriety to help the witches, once I was reappointed the position of Chancellor when Severin took the throne. It was a huge risk. Could we chance it?

  Avia’s shoulders rose, huddled up by her ears. “You don’t want to do it.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You’re not saying anything.”

  “That’s because I’m terrified,” I said. “This could blow up in my face.”

  “I think it will win you the Lower House,” Avia said. “If you support it, you could swing votes.”

  “But that might not be enough.” A sour taste rose in my mouth, flavored with lies. The easiest kind of lie: the one mixed with so much truth it went unnoticed. “Queen Constantina has appointed a new Cabinet. They’re sure to strike down the House’s vote.”

  Avia’s eyes flew open. “What? Without letting the House interview the choices?”

  “Legally, she doesn’t have to involve anyone in her decisions.”

  “I have to teach you what’s worthy of a headline,” Avia grumbled. “Dropping a story on me like that.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. A thumping knock sounded on the main door of my office. More mail, probably. “Maybe there’s a way to tie it in with Severin’s story.”

  She cocked her head. “You call the Crown Prince by name?”

  “He insisted,” I said. “We work together. I see him more often than I see the Queen, these days—”

  Heavy footsteps. Janet protesting “You can’t go in there!” just as the door to my office opened and Queensguards barged inside.

  “Miss Avia Faye Jessup,” a beaky-nosed gu
ard said. “We arrest you in the name of the Queen. The charge is sedition.”

  “What?”

  We said it simultaneously, and Avia stared at me, hurt burning in her eyes.

  “No,” I said. “Avia, I didn’t do this. I would have never—you can’t take her!” I shouted. “I am invoking the rule of legal shelter.”

  “You can’t shelter her from the Queen’s charge,” the guard said. “She’s above your authority, don’t you remember?”

  “What is your evidence?” I demanded. “What proof leverages this charge?”

  “Miss Jessup was in possession of seditious material, including a fraudulent manuscript accusing Her Majesty’s government of a conspiracy designed to inflame the temper of the people. Included with it were documents written with the intent of publication.”

  My stomach hit the floor. I had thought I’d found the weapon that would keep Avia safe from Father. I had relaxed my guard, thinking him defeated. I had underestimated him.

  “You set me up,” Avia said. She looked at me with hurt hollowing out her expression, the warmth of friendship and trust banished from it. Gone, it tore at the center of my chest. I would have fallen to my knees, if it would have put everything back together again.

  “No. I didn’t. I swear to you, it was Father. He did this.”

  She stared at me, incredulous. “How?”

  I didn’t know. All hope dulled, crumpling inside me. I didn’t know how. I had no proof.

  The guards clapped manacles on Avia, their hands impersonal and blunt as they searched her, taking her camera, her pen, her press badge. She watched me as she endured all their indignities. She turned her head and kept my gaze as they hauled her out of my office and marched her to Kingsgrave Prison. She would stand trial for sedition. The court would treat her research as lies. Disgraced as a traitor, she would hang.

  I thought I had protected her, but only a fool would underestimate Sir Christopher Leland Hensley.

  Janet came in when they were all gone. “What did she do?”

  All I could see was the look on her face when they took her away.

  “She told the truth,” I said, “and she’d barely gotten started.”