9

“WE HAD TWO NEW ORDERS WHILE YOU WERE GONE YESTERDAY,” Alice said as I scanned the slate with our schedule. “Recognize any names?”

“A charmed mantelet for Sanna … Eastlake? As in, the Lady Eastlake?”

“The very same,” Alice said with a smile. The Eastlakes were not a major house of nobility, but rumor had it that Lord Eastlake and his wife, a Serafan minor princess, were rising in status, the lord favored by the king for appointment to the office of the Lord of Stone when old Lord Suthermount retired from the position. “And a merchant’s daughter with a love-charmed ball gown.”

“A ball gown—that will be quite a bit of work. Is she returning for a consultation?”

“Of course,” Alice said. “She already said she wanted green, so I made a swatch set for you.” She paused. “I hope that’s all right.”

I was impressed with Alice’s forethought and initiative. “Yes, thank you—that is, if she can wear green. Not everyone can.” I laughed, giddy at the nearly full slate of orders.

“She can,” Alice replied, confident. “And Penny will be late.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I hope she had a good reason,” I said before I could stop myself, hoping Kristos didn’t have anything to do with her tardiness.

Alice shrugged her rounded shoulders. “She said her mother needed something,” she replied, evasive.

“But you don’t think so?” I pressed.

Alice pursed her lips. “I don’t want to gossip. But she and her mother had a falling-out.” She cleared her throat. “Over Kristos.”

To my credit as a sister, I felt immediately defensive for my brother. “Well,” I said, keeping my voice level, “plenty of Galatines don’t prefer their children getting involved with Pellians.”

Alice cocked her head. “I don’t think it’s that,” she said. “I mean, yes, plenty avoid the Pellian quarter, but you’re not—” She flushed and moved to the other side of the counter, tidying stacks of papers. “No, it’s the Laborers’ League. She doesn’t want Penny tied up with that.”

“Of course,” I said. For the same reasons, I imagined, that I didn’t want to be tied up in it.

“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean anything by it.” The red in her broad face intensified. “It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the Pellian quarter,” she added.

“Nothing to apologize for, Alice.” My hands hesitated over an order to be wrapped. “You said I’m not—I’m not what?”

She bit her lip. “I don’t suppose I think of you as Pellian. In the same way as the Pellian quarter.”

I nodded. This was not exactly surprising and, if anything, was the image I had curated of myself. A high-end Galatine seamstress, not a Pellian market woman. Still, it made me a little uncomfortable. “What do you think of as Pellian?” I asked, curious.

“I suppose I think they keep to themselves, dress a little differently, wear kerchiefs instead of caps.” She shrugged. “I don’t need anything from the Pellian quarter and they don’t need anything from me, so I don’t see much of them.” Alice’s pragmatism was one of her strongest and best traits, I reminded myself with a small smile, but her outlook seemed to be common enough—Pellians were the people who kept to themselves, spoke a different language, and thought spinach pie was a perfectly good dinner. Kristos and I seemed to be part of a different group, more like the children of provincial Galatines who moved to the city—perhaps not native, but acclimated.

I left Alice with a list of tasks and set off to see Kristos’s demonstration, as I had promised. Fountain Square was quiet, but I wasn’t surprised as I walked across the wide plaza. Fridays were market days, many mornings and evenings saw services honoring the Galatine Natures at the cathedral, and plenty of days in between saw the square play host to entertainment, small fairs, and specialty markets. I always came for the Silk Fair, when merchants from around Galitha and beyond brought the finest silks and specialty cottons and wools—fabrics I couldn’t buy even at Galitha City’s best drapers most of the year.

I always managed to buy a few bolts of silk that no one else did, too. By my second year perusing the stalls, word had circulated that I was not just any seamstress. The Serafan silk merchants thought I was a sorceress like those of their royal court, and treated me with deference and respect. A family of Kvys wool weavers called me a witch behind their hands and prayed to their preferred saints when I passed. One wisp-thin woman from the mountains who ran a workshop stamping the finest-quality cottons was convinced I was a fairy. Accordingly, some merchants refused to do business with me, but others offered me, in tentative, hushed tones, enticing deals. Their best fabrics, usually reserved for direct sale to the queen’s house. A full bolt for the cost of half. First pick of their private stock.

I quickly selected the merchants whose stock was unique, beautiful, and of the highest quality, and struck deals with them. One wanted a health charm for her rheumatism, another a love charm for his shy daughter. For many, trade throughout Galitha was the only access to charms they had, and many had not encountered the Pellians, who had little use for fine silks and expensive cottons, in other Galatine cities who could have cast for them. Plenty of countries did not allow casting, whether they believed in charms or not—the concept went against religious or moral codes. On the hard-bitten, cold island of Fen, magic, even illusion and card tricks, was illegal, and I’d never even heard of a caster from Kvyset, where they said the only thing deeper than the nation’s faith in their saints was the snowdrifts in winter. I was happy to fulfill merchants’ requests, working through the night to have kerchiefs and caps and shawls complete before they packed their stalls and departed.

When the charms worked, I had permanent allies at the fair.

It was still months until the next Silk Fair, I was reminded by the cold expanse of cobblestones. A few people bustled through, hurrying from the docks to the shops, from the mills on the west side of the city and the docks by the river to their homes on the east. Hardly anyone loitered in the square today.

Hardly anyone, save a knot of people in front of the church, waving banners. And wearing red hats.

Kristos’s protest. I hovered beside the huge bronze fountain in the center of the square, debating whether to acknowledge Kristos with a tacit hello or to simply go home. He had insisted I see his demonstration, and I had obliged. Even if I wasn’t participating, I didn’t want to be seen. Yet I knew that ignoring him would upset him—he wanted to make me a true participant in his crusade. Didn’t he realize that our livelihood depended very much on my staying in the good graces of nobles—the very nobles he was probably shouting about at passersby right now?

With a rueful laugh I thought of Lady Viola’s friends discussing Melchoir in the salon. Kristos would never believe that noble ladies could give a second thought to the same issues he was arguing.

I watched a few moments longer, inspecting the scene as though it were a garment I could mentally deconstruct and draft a pattern from. A woman in a brown cloak distributed broadsides to passersby, whether they wanted them or not. I recognized her from the Hazel Dell—the laundress with the ruddy face, her scarred hands pressing broadsides into the small crowd that began to coalesce around the members of the League.

The laundress had clearly not convinced many of her compatriots to join her. A half dozen women joined the dozens of men present. Two, the tall Pellian girl included, carried homemade banners and waved them at the people passing through the square. The rest of the group was, I admitted, larger than I had anticipated. They were all clearly laborers: young, barrel-chested men and older men carrying years of work on bent backs; natives to the city; northern Galatine provincials with straw-blond hair; southern provincials with nut-brown eyes and hair; Pellians; and one man who might have been Kvys. It was as though a cyclone had whipped through the warehouses and docks of Galitha City, picked up whatever workers it could snatch, and dumped them here. Nearly half wore the red caps like the ones I had made at Kristos’s request; a flash of golden glimmer in the seam of one cap, worn by a man I didn’t know, confirmed that, as Kristos had said, they would be distributed randomly among the demonstrators. Even without the caps, they looked as though they had a uniform: patched and roughspun clothing, eschewing any attempt to wear “market best” clothing and sticking to the canvas trousers and woolen jackets meant for work.

The only exception was a man in pristine black, standing at the back of the crowd, speaking quietly to Niko. Pyord Venko, I realized with a start, looking almost comically out of place next to so much roughspun. His conversation with Niko seemed almost like a shop owner directing assistants. The only thing that looked like a podium, a rickety stack of crates meant to imitate a stage, was already occupied.

By my brother.

“For pity’s sake,” I muttered. He was standing on a crate, gesturing exuberantly and speaking words that were whipped away by the wind before they reached me. I rolled my eyes. He looked like one of the preachers who sometimes set up a box at the edge of the square on market days—vehement, passionate, and, I thought, absurd.

Then I saw the soldiers.

They entered the square from the little side street that ran beside the church. A mousy woman in faded green pointed from the corner, and even though I thought my brother and his friends were behaving like idiots, I hated her more than I’d hated anyone in my life at that moment. She’d complained. She’d brought the soldiers into this—and like as not they’d end up making arrests. I imagined my brother spending the night in a cell in the gaol block of the Stone Castle, and I shivered.

Despite the fact that I had no idea what to do or say, I took off across the square.

Kristos saw me before he saw the soldiers, probably because their ranks of pale blue coats hadn’t yet emerged from the shadows between the tall buildings, and I was as brightly colored as a parrot in my cloak and gloves. He waved and, to my relief, stepped down from the box.

“Sophie!” He gestured with wide, excited arms. “Isn’t this grand? We’ve handed out over a hundred pamphlets and—”

He stopped speaking as soon as he saw the soldiers. Their captain spoke to a squirrely-looking protester who had been waving a large misspelled sign.

I heard his voice rise, an argument brewing over a necessary assembly permit. Of course—the office of the Lord of Stones would have to approve any assembly in the city. I was fairly sure Kristos and his subalterns hadn’t applied for one. In fact, I was fairly sure that they had deliberately avoided doing so, knowing full well that their coalition of Red Caps speaking against the nobility would be denied.

“Without the permit,” the soldier captain intoned, “you will have to disband immediately.” With that, he grabbed the sign nearest him and cracked the wooden stake it was mounted on across his knee. I flushed—there was no need for anger, not now. Kristos and his comrades would leave, I was sure of it.

The soldiers held their ranks, and then, as though moving slowly, against an ocean wave, they formed a line, muskets at the ready. Their faces were resolute, impassive. The crowd behind me hadn’t wavered, I realized, and even now pushed forward slightly. I was caught in the swell like a fish in the ocean foam, unable to swim opposite the current.

“What’s the idea?” someone with a gravelly voice shouted. I was forced forward as the crowd of protesters surged toward the soldiers. Any objection I voiced came out as a mere squeak, and I realized that the burly man and the stocky woman next to me had picked up loose bricks. I saw Jack trying to convince those nearest him to put down their bricks and signs, while Niko shouted back at the captain. Pyord Venko was nowhere to be seen.

I pressed against the throng around me, trying to disentangle myself from them. I had to find Kristos. With him, I was safe—and with me, so was he.

He had already scrambled up on the box platform again. My throat tightened—no. He was making a spectacle of himself, a target.

“Please,” he called, his voice incredibly steady, “do not answer this challenge with violence! We must practice peaceful methods if we’re to convince anyone—”

A brick flew from the crowd pressing against me and struck one of the soldiers in the head. He dropped to the ground like a sack of flour. I heard screaming, and realized it was me.

“Stop!” I yelled, begging now, begging for anyone to hear.

“Stop.” The same word I had cried, but echoed in icy control by the captain.

The throng around me only yelled louder.

And then the captain had the soldier nearest him raise his musket and aim.

Right at Kristos.

My breath stalled. My mind stopped processing anything but that musket and Kristos’s exposed body; I would have sworn that even my heart stopped. The crowd around me was silenced.

Kristos didn’t move, but it was determination, not fear, that spread over his face. He squared his shoulders.

The soldier squeezed the trigger.

Nothing.

The crowd ran, dispersing in all directions as the soldier picked at the lock of his musket, which, in the cool damp, had misfired. I dropped to my knees, strangled noises like a kitten’s sobs escaping my lips.

The captain gestured, once, and the soldiers marched out of the square. Someone helped the soldier who had been struck with the brick to his feet, and they staggered after the crisply uniform line. Kristos jumped from the platform and gathered me in his arms.

“Let me take you home” was all he said.