by Sharon Shinn
In the third chamber, I didn’t even look around; I went straight to the statue at the front of the room. Her arms were lifted above her head and her carved face was bright with a smile. Yes, please, goddess, grant me joy, I begged silently. Joy for me, joy for Marguerite. Maybe we don’t deserve it. Maybe we can’t have it for very long. But couldn’t we have it for a short time, just enough to keep our hearts warm for as long as we have memories?
She didn’t answer, but her smile didn’t waver. I couldn’t tell if she’d heard me.
When I turned to scan the pews that faced the dais, I found Taeline standing at the end of one row, watching me. She was wearing the red robes of celebration, and they threw a rosy tint into her pale cheeks, but otherwise she looked the same as always. I nodded at her, found a seat in an unoccupied bench, and waited for her to join me.
She slipped in next to me and whispered, “Has something happened to Marguerite?”
“Nothing new,” I said, and gave her the update as succinctly as I could. Before I’d left the palace, I’d asked Marguerite how much Taeline knew. Everything had been her response. So at least I didn’t have to spend time explaining anything.
“She has to go,” Taeline said as soon as I was done. “If it is her only hope of survival—and if he will truly help her—” She paused for a moment to study me. “You trust him?”
“It hardly matters if I trust him,” I said. “He knows everything—and as soon as someone questions the landlady, the inquisitor will know everything, too. But I believe that if Nico planned to betray us, he would have done so already. So I believe he will supply a guide and a carriage that will take us to Banch Harbor, and not to the Camarria dungeons.”
“Then she has to go.”
“She wants to see you one last time. In private.” I took a deep breath. “I know a place you can meet.”
There was a long silence while Taeline first studied me, then dropped her gaze to stare at her folded hands. Maybe she was wondering if Marguerite was right to trust me. Maybe she was reviewing her vows to the goddess and trying to decide if such a meeting would break them—and if she cared. Maybe she was just trying to hold her hope and fear and sorrow in check.
“When?” she said at last.
“Tomorrow morning. If all goes well, we will be gone the day after that.”
She nodded, as if that made sense, though it hardly made sense to me. One more day in Camarria? One more night, maybe two, to lie beside Nico and whisper of love? One more day before I abandoned every detail of the life I had known and flung myself into unwanted adventure? I could scarcely make myself believe it.
“Where?” she asked.
“There’s an abandoned building near Amanda Plaza. I have the key.”
“Describe it.”
Within a few sentences, she was nodding again; she undoubtedly spent a great deal of time at that square, and it was a distinctive building. “I’ll be there,” she said, and rose to her feet without saying another word. She didn’t even offer me the traditional benediction before she stepped away and slipped into another pew and greeted the petitioner with a restrained smile.
I took a moment to collect my thoughts, then hurried back to the palace.
That evening as we dressed for dinner, Marguerite and I laid our plans. We would skip the morning’s planned outing to some ruins on the edge of town so that she and Taeline could keep their assignation. Once we returned, I would resume my maid’s clothing and make a discreet circuit of the city, pawning jewels for cash. Marguerite would attend the evening dinner and any social function that the prince planned, but she would admit to feeling unwell. That way no one would be surprised when she didn’t join whatever outing the prince had planned for the following day.
After the rest of the guests had gone off on their excursion, we would make our way downstairs wearing plain gowns and sturdy shoes and, in Marguerite’s case, the wan expression a woman might assume if she was plagued by a severe headache. “I always feel better if I visit the temple,” she would say to anyone who expressed concern, and off we would go. But we would head to some other meeting place that we had determined beforehand. Assuming that Nico really would supply us with a carriage and driver, we would instantly begin our perilous journey. Constantly starting with fear every time we heard carriage wheels behind us. Incessantly wondering if we had made the right choice. Trying unsuccessfully to hide our broken hearts.
“One thing,” I said. “It will be easy to track four identical women as they move through the city. We must find some way to make ourselves look different. We will dress the echoes in gowns of different hues, and we’ll bring accessories to change our appearance, slowly, as we stroll along. I’ll take off my wig. Purpose will remove her veil, but Patience will leave hers on. Someone will put a red scarf over her shoulders.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“And we’ll split up, just a little. I’ll walk with one of the echoes on one side of the street, you’ll walk with the other one a few feet back. Release them, so they don’t move the way you do. We won’t be so noticeable.”
“All excellent notions. I would think you had been a runaway your whole life.” She sighed and made a minute adjustment to the red flower pinned in her coiled blond hair. “I wish we could manage just one change of clothes, though. It will be very tedious having a single dress and one set of underthings for the foreseeable future.”
“I’ve thought about that, too,” I said. “I’m going to pack a small bag with absolute necessities and leave it with Nico. He’ll find a way to get it in the carriage.”
“Brilliant!” she exclaimed. “Then I think we’re all set. What else is left to do?”
“Get through dinner and tomorrow.”
Dinner was simple enough, though I frequently caught myself gazing around the room when I should have been glancing down at my plate or pretending I was talking to Jordan’s echo, seated beside me. One more dinner in this room, I was thinking. How long will I remember exactly how it looks? How long before I have another meal even half as good as this one? As fugitives with a severely limited budget, we would find ourselves scrambling to buy food and to find shelter and to replace our woefully limited wardrobe.
You’ll manage, I told myself fiercely. You’ll find work. The customs may be different in Ferrenlea, but someone will always need a maid or a cook or a seamstress. You’ll survive.
Please, goddess, let us survive.
After the meal, the prince provided an evening of musical entertainment, but as far as I could tell, the nobles paid very little attention to the performers. Instead, they clustered together in their chairs, flirting and repeating gossip. Vivienne was the first one to excuse herself and seek her bed; Marguerite was the fifth.
An hour later, I was on the bridge with a portmanteau at my feet, impatiently awaiting Nico. He laughed when he arrived ten minutes later.
“Aren’t you the smart one, always thinking ahead?” he said in an admiring voice.
“There’s no money in it, if you were thinking of stealing it,” I joked. “I’ll do my pawning tomorrow. Is there a place you recommend that I go?”
“I’ll do better than that—I’ll have Chessie meet you in the morning and take you to one of the more reputable establishments. Chessie is one of my, um, professional contacts.”
“Sounds interesting,” I said, wondering if I was about to meet a criminal. “But I can’t do it until the afternoon.”
“All right. Can you be under the stone bridge at the Amanda Plaza by one?”
I nodded. “I think so. How will I recognize Chessie?”
“She’ll find you.”
“And are you sure she can be trusted? What if she goes straight to Malachi?”
Nico laughed softly. “He’s the last person she’d tell a secret to.”
“Sounds like a story there.”
“Yes, but it’s not mine to tell,” he said, his voice abruptly changing as he took me into his arms. “We’re making all t
hese plans and then I suddenly realize— What I’m doing is sending you away from me. I can’t believe it. Tonight and tomorrow and then you’re gone.” He shook his head. “It seems impossible.”
“You could come with us,” I said into his shirt. “Don’t just hire a carriage. Take us to Banch Harbor yourself—and sail with us to Ferrenlea.”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he said.
I pulled back. “You have?”
He kissed me. “What, it wasn’t a serious invitation?”
“No, it was! It would be wonderful to have you along! It would seem much more like an adventure than a headlong flight. But—” Reality swept in to dampen my sudden delight. “Oh, but we couldn’t have you give up your whole life for us! You have a respectable position here, and an uncle who trusts you, and a mother who relies on you—”
“These are the very things that I am weighing,” he admitted. “And if I am gone from the city, I won’t know what happens with Malachi’s investigation. I won’t know when it’s safe for you to return.”
“You have to stay,” I said stoutly.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m still thinking it over.”
I sighed and leaned my head against his chest. “We don’t seem to have been very good influences on each other,” I said. “We’ve showed a shocking lack of morality—we’ve lied to our closest friends on the other person’s behalf—and now you’re thinking about throwing away responsibility and setting off on a vagabond’s life, all for my sake.”
“Well,” he said, “being moral and telling the truth and staying behind all seem like they would make me unhappy. So I might choose to do what makes me happy.”
I lifted my head. “So I’ve made you selfish, too.”
He kissed me. “I was always selfish,” he said against my mouth. “I’m just enjoying it more.”
I laughed, and then I sighed again, and then I kissed him a second time. And a third and fifth and tenth and hundredth time. Because he might not come with us after all—shouldn’t come with us, and I would make that clear as soon as I had an opportunity to speak—and I needed to collect as many memories as I could while I still had the chance.
It is strange enough to slip out of your room and look nervously over your shoulder and feel your heart race as you set off on your own forbidden tryst. It is doubly strange to go through all these motions as you escort someone else to her illicit rendezvous. Lourdes seemed to watch us with a sharper stare than usual as we crossed the immense foyer. The footmen offered to accompany us if we wanted an escort. Every serving girl we passed in the street, every merchant we glimpsed through a shop window, seemed to gaze at us a little too long, as if committing our features to memory, as if preparing to give testimony about when we had passed and what we were wearing.
I was betting that tomorrow’s journey to the designated meeting point would be even more fraught with imagined dangers. Or real ones. This short heart-stopping trek across the city was just a rehearsal.
Taeline was waiting for us, idling across the street from the abandoned building. I had to look twice to realize it was her, for she was dressed in an ordinary gown of navy blue, and her dark hair wasn’t pulled back in its usual knot, but loose around her shoulders. She looked both younger and less serene in her everyday attire—or maybe it was the excitement of the desperate romance that caused her face to flush and her lips to tremble.
My key opened the rusty padlock with no trouble, and the five of us were soon inside. We all paused when we were just across the threshold and listened for a few moments, waiting to see if anyone had followed us and planned to object to our arrival. But all we heard from the street outside were the normal noises of horses and carts and people.
Life going by outside. A different kind of life being explored inside.
“There’s a blanket on the fifth floor, and better light,” I said. “I’ll wait down here. And the echoes—” Well, I didn’t know about Patience and Purpose. I presumed this would be a situation in which Marguerite would want to release them, so they were not mimicking her every move—but I honestly could not predict how close Marguerite would want them or how exactly they would behave.
“I’ll leave them on the second floor,” Marguerite said. “We will all have a sort of privacy.”
She took Taeline’s hand and led her up the stairs, Patience and Purpose following. I heard two sets of footsteps stop at the first landing, and two sets of footsteps continue.
After that it was quiet, or at least whatever noises that were produced on the top story and drifted down to the ground level could not be heard through the sound of my soft humming. I moved slowly around the perimeter of the room, trying to find spots on the grimy windows that were clean enough to give me a glimpse of the outside world. I could only see pieces of the people and animals passing by—a crest on a carriage door, the long nose of a horse, a woman’s bonnet. It wasn’t quite enough to allow me to assemble an entire picture in my head.
Maybe an hour after we arrived, the others descended carefully down the stone staircase. Marguerite and Taeline were holding hands, and so were Purpose and Patience. All four of them looked as if they had been weeping, for their eyes were red, their cheeks were wet, and their faces were flushed. But at the same time, they all looked rested and tranquil, as if the emotional storm that had passed through them had left them exhausted and at peace.
Marguerite came straight to me and kissed my cheek. “Thank you,” she said. Taeline hung back, but she nodded soberly in my direction. I wondered what color she would pick to wear when she returned to her temple duties.
“We have to get back,” I said. “I have a lot to get done this afternoon.”
“I can’t believe we’re leaving tomorrow,” Marguerite said.
“It’s good you’re going,” Taeline responded.
Marguerite sighed. “Yes. But I can’t bear it.”
She paused to kiss Taeline one more time—sweetly, as if just touching her lips to the spray of a sacred fountain—and then headed out the door. I secured the padlock once we were all out on the street. And then, with no more than a single long, searching look at Taeline, Marguerite turned and began walking back toward the palace. The echoes and I fell in step behind her. I could tell she was crying again because, beside me, Purpose and Patience were weeping silently.
Well, and because I was crying, too.
I managed a quick lunch down in the kitchen and shared a lament with Vivienne’s maid.
“Is your mistress always so full of sighs and tears?” I demanded. “She’s the kindest woman, but gorsey! Lady Marguerite is so despondent sometimes it just makes my heart sink to my shoes.”
“Lady Vivienne didn’t used to be that way,” replied the maid, a heavyset middle-aged woman whose round face showed great kindness. “She was always rather a happy girl. But first there was the break with Cormac, and now this business with the echo—” She shook her head. “I’m not sure she’ll ever be her old self again, even once we’re back in Thelleron.”
“Marguerite is having such a bad spell with her headaches,” I declared. “She didn’t go with all the others to visit the ruins this morning, and I’ll be surprised if she gets up tomorrow before noon.”
“That poor woman. I hope the goddess takes pity on her and sends her some relief.”
Once I had advanced the idea that Marguerite would be prostrate tomorrow, it was time to go. I had a satchel full of jewels—everything Marguerite owned except the onyx necklace, which she planned to wear at dinner tonight, and the onyx bracelet, which she never took off. Would this be enough to fund our flight? It had better be.
The streets of Camarria had never seemed so crowded as I made my way down busy boulevards and across two bridges on my way to Amanda Plaza. Today there was no wedding party clustered around the goddess statues in the center, so I paused before each one as I dropped three coins into the grate and spoke the briefest of prayers. Goddess grant us mercy. Goddess mete out justice t
o those who wrong us. Goddess bring us joy.
Then I headed for the shadow that, an hour past noon, lay in a squat, straight line almost directly under the arching stone bridge. A few people were already loitering there, as it was one of the few places in the plaza that offered shelter from the sun. At least two looked like pickpockets; one was a frazzled young mother holding a whimpering baby; and one was a young woman about my own age. She was dressed like a boy, though the clothes were loose-fitting and nondescript. Most of her hair was tucked under a soft cap, but a few tendrils of auburn peeked out from the edges. She was a little taller than I was, a bit more slender, and alert in the way of a feral cat. Her delicate features were a little too sharp to be beautiful, but she was certainly arresting. I found myself wondering how well Nico knew her and feeling a little depressed because she was clearly a much more interesting person than I was. My guess was that she had seen me the minute I stepped into the square and had already formed her own distinct impressions about me.
Just in case I was wrong, I didn’t approach her, but the minute I paused in the shadow, she stepped over to me. “I believe we have a friend in common,” she said.
Nico had told me we wouldn’t be using names, but that this would be the phrase to expect from his contact. I nodded. “I’m sorry if I kept you waiting.”
Chessie’s smile was quick and attractive. “There’s always plenty to see at Amanda Plaza. I wasn’t bored at all.”
I couldn’t help smiling in return. “I guess we should get started.”
She nodded and turned toward the southeastern corner of the plaza, setting off toward a quadrant of the city I hadn’t had had occasion to explore. Within a dozen blocks, it was clear this was a rather disreputable district that I probably never would have had a reason to visit under ordinary circumstances. Most of the buildings were shabby or abandoned; those still in use appeared to be taverns, gaming salons, moneylenders’ offices, or brothels. At this bright hour of the day, business was slow, but there were still patrons at every establishment. I didn’t feel like I was in danger, precisely, but I did hold my satchel of jewels very firmly to my chest, and I did pay close attention to my surroundings.
