11

THE WEEK FOLLOWING KRISTOS’S NEAR MISS WAS BUSY, AND OUR shop worked to complete orders and schedule new ones, relieving some, if not all, of my worries about a difficult winter. It took most of the week to ready Lady Snowmont’s sketches, and I left the shop early to meet with her, fretting quietly about whether Alice would set the sleeves on the ball gown correctly.

“Lady Snowmont is conversing privately with a friend,” Miss Vochant said when she answered the door, her starched cap bobbing along with her lilting voice. “She will see you in a moment, and said to please make yourself at home in the salon.”

I smiled and handed the maid my cloak and gloves, but my cheer was forced. Though I was now familiar with Lady Snowmont’s beautiful salon, I was still uncomfortable here. My clothing rivaled the other ladies’ ensembles, but I felt like a fraud, treated like a guest when I was a tradesman here for work. And such a strange contrast—mere days before, chased from the square with a band of protesters, today surrounded by the elite of Galitha.

I hovered at the edges of the room, watching a dark-haired woman pluck the strings of a harp. Her pale green, upturned eyes focused intently on the strings, as though she could see right through them to the notes they were producing, and her hands seemed to move faster than the melody she created. Though I tried to anticipate her next sequence of notes, I couldn’t.

“Marguerite is a wonder.” I jumped—the speaker was right next to me. Nia, one of the women I’d spoken to before. She had mastered the art of walking quietly in her fashionable pointed-toe shoes.

“Her music is lovely,” I agreed, unsure what else to say.

“Lovely, and yes—hers.” Nia smiled. “She’s a composer, not just a harpist. That’s one of her own pieces.”

I gawked. I had to admit to myself that I had held a bit of superiority over most of the rich women who congregated here, assuming that they were perhaps talented in their niches, but not artists themselves, despite the cultured tenor of Viola’s salon. That I was something special here, even that nobles could not also, save rare exceptions like Viola, be artists, too.

Clearly, I was not.

“Do you—that is, are you an artist of some kind, too?” I asked Nia.

She laughed, her white teeth bright against her walnut-stain-hued lips. “No, I am no artist.” I felt moderately relieved until she added, “I study ancient history and languages. I’m in the middle of translating a set of ancient Pellian scrolls at the moment.”

I realized my mouth was open again. “Ancient Pellian? Aren’t there—what? Five people in the world who can read that?”

Nia laughed. “Yes, just about right. But I find the study of ancient practice and language fascinating.”

She was lucky, I reasoned, to be able to study it. Her father must have indulged her interests. Or perhaps female scholars were more common in the Allied Equatorial States.

“You are of Pellian descent, no? I am sorry—that was perhaps a rude question.”

“Not at all,” I replied, though most Galatines did not make so bold as to discuss lineage aside from family ties and noble houses. “I certainly don’t know much about ancient Pellia.” I laughed. Or, I didn’t add, contemporary Pellia.

“I visited the Pellian quarter—it is difficult to find remnants of the ancient culture among its modern descendants. Not that this is unusual—Galatines no longer sacrifice birds to the sky god,” she said as though this were a joke anyone but an antiquarian would understand.

“The seamstress!” Another woman I remembered from before, Pauline, the petite brunette, joined us. “She’s back. Is she talking economic theory again?” I started to bristle, but Pauline was earnest. Had she actually been interested in what I had to say?

“Not yet,” Nia replied. “We were discussing the Pellian quarter and its ties to my studies. Do you know, the most common Pellian thing I saw was a rather unusual cap.”

“Yes,” I said, hedging my reply. “A symbol of the workers’ group.”

Nia nodded. “The Laborers’ League.” I shouldn’t have been surprised that a member of Viola’s clearly well-read salon knew their proper name. “I admit to confusion—I had not believed them to be a Pellian organization.”

“The Pellians are discontent with the work they get,” Pauline answered quickly, then flushed, glancing at me. “I mean, the most recent immigrants. They suppose Galitha to be a cornucopia compared to Pellia—maybe it is, but the work is still scarce in the winter.”

“It isn’t only the Pellians,” I replied carefully.

“Of course not,” Pauline replied. “If Nia extricated her nose from her books more often, she’d have seen those caps on Galatines already.”

“Is that so? What an unusual choice.” Nia looked amused. “The shape is hardly flattering. So is the unrest due to the Pellians, or no?”

I deferred to Pauline, curious what her perspective would be. “It isn’t only the Pellians,” she agreed with me. “Not by far. They’re simply one group that this League has convinced to join.” She shrugged. “I don’t even know that they’ve joined in larger proportion to the Galatines. Sophie?”

“No, I don’t think so. Of course, they don’t have a census,” I joked. “I admit, I was worried the Pellians would be blamed.”

“That would be foolish,” Pauline replied.

“Frightened people often are,” I said evenly.

“Well, among my circle no one seems to blame them,” she said, as though her circle’s opinion settled the matter. In some ways, it did—if the nobility was not singling out the Pellians, official reactions to the League wouldn’t focus on the quarter. “The Pellians are discontent. The Galatines are upset. The provincials are dissatisfied. It seems there is no one place to foist blame except this League, and this League seems to be truly that—an alliance of all sorts of moderately disgruntled people.”

I was grateful no one asked my opinion about the League itself before Pauline changed the subject. “But did you hear about the riot in Fountain Square? They said there were hundreds of protesters, and that the soldiers had to threaten them with their rifles.”

I didn’t like that Kristos’s protest was taking on near-myth status. “Not hundreds. And it was the regulars who deployed, not the riflemen.”

“You saw?” Pauline asked, breathless. I started to brush her off, but Nia was also listening, rapt.

“Yes. I—I ran into the whole mess walking home,” I lied. “The soldiers were only called because a local shop owner complained. It wasn’t very exciting before they showed up.”

“Well? What were they doing?” Nia asked.

“Just handing out pamphlets. They had signs. One man was talking, giving a speech,” I added, remembering Kristos’s impassioned voice.

“Not as exciting as the gossip mill made it out to be. Fiona said they shot someone!”

My stomach wrenched. “No. They didn’t shoot anyone.” I paused, letting the nausea settle. “The captain ordered one man to ready his gun but … no one was shot,” I reiterated.

“Good heavens, you were right there,” Nia said, her eyes narrowing. The harp music had stopped. I wished it would start again. Anything to fill the silence. But Marguerite rose from her chair by the harp and joined us, instead. “Some of the men in the diplomatic corps say that they should start searching homes for caches of weapons,” Nia added.

“You don’t think—really?” Pauline gasped. “That they’re considering—revolt?”

I blanched. I had suspected the same for weeks, but hearing others express the same concern made the threat suddenly real, coalescing like threads of a dream into a cohesive image. Could there already be weapons stashed in League houses throughout the city?

Nia shrugged. “You know your countrymen better than I do. But the Allied States are watching this with concern, I will tell you.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that the Red Caps’ squalling could be heard as far away as the Allied Equatorial States. “And what do they think?” I asked.

Nia shrugged. “They don’t care what kind of government your nation has, so long as you buy our sugar and cotton. But political unrest means economic unrest. They aren’t happy at the prospect of our biggest trade partner being embroiled in civil war.”

“Civil war!” Another woman, in a brilliant cotton chintz probably produced in the Equatorial States, shook her head. “It’s pamphlets and occasional riots—surely that’s all. Surely.”

“That is how the Serafan Civil War started,” Marguerite, the harpist, said. Her slight build and intense eyes were inherited, perhaps, from a Serafan parent or grandparent, a noble intermarriage. “Less pamphleteering and more secret meetings and speeches, but it ended with pikes in the streets and hangings before the summit finally split East Serafe from West.”

I was curious—history had never been a keen interest of mine, and I was woefully behind these women in studying international politics. The Serafan Civil War was over a hundred years past, but I knew little else about it. I debated if I should ask for clarification of this particular historical turn, or if that would make me look a complete bumpkin.

Before I could decide, the door to Lady Snowmont’s private chambers opened, and she emerged, a young man holding the door for her. The young man from the last time I was here, with the hazel eyes. I took a better look—I could tell by his fine silk suit and the delicate filigree gold medal looped over his left breast that he was nobility. I squinted, but I couldn’t make out the device on the medal that would tell me what house he belonged to. He shared a private smile with Lady Snowmont before stepping toward the harpist with a greeting.

I blushed. There were always rumors, of course, of Lady Snowmont’s salon being a gathering place for lovers and a den of romance for secret rendezvous, but I had never paid them any more heed than any other fanciful story about the aristocracy. But the young man—handsome with his rakishly unkempt honey-brown hair—had clearly been in Lady Viola’s private company.

Nia must have seen my flushed cheeks, because she laughed. “What are you thinking, little Thimble Thumb?”

I felt my ears growing even hotter. “Nothing, I—he’s—who is he?”

Nia laughed harder. “Theodor, First Duke of Westland. Son of the Prince of Westland, first heir to the throne. And he’s not Lady Snowmont’s lover, in case you were wondering.”

“I—no.” I clamped my mouth shut.

Nia was not fooled, but she politely didn’t say anything further on the subject. “I believe the First Duke is going to be showing us the sketches of the plantings in his greenhouse,” she explained. Theodor of Westland looked up from his conversation with Viola and glanced at me. I flushed as he dipped a polite bow and broke into a broad grin. He recognized me.

“A greenhouse? That’s fascinating,” I said, biting back my embarrassment as Lady Viola Snowmont joined us.

“It certainly is.” Lady Snowmont caught my arm. “But for now I think you have plans of an entirely different sort to show me.”

She led me to her private sitting room, and I hesitated before sitting down beside her. I had a fistful of swatches, and I had been confident in the design I had sketched. Plunging back into the elegant salon, however, had drained my confidence, and now I was second-guessing the work I had done.

“You—you said you wanted pink,” I began, fishing the swatches from my satchel. Alice had done what I’d instructed, cutting a slip from each of our pink fabrics, and I had a dozen different silks and several cotton prints on hand.

“Yes, pink sounds perfect for this winter. It’s already feeling so … dull, isn’t it?” She took the fabrics from me, her small fingers appreciating the weave and weight of each. “Pink seems just the thing to counteract January.”

I smiled—already I liked Viola’s style. While most women chose dour colors for winter clothes, or pristine white like the snow, I grew tired of seeing washed-out clothes on a washed-out landscape. Still, my fingers grew twitchy as I pulled the sketches from the bag.

She was silent as she scanned each image carefully. My confidence sank further. The gown I had designed was simple pink with white undersleeves and a white underbodice, unencumbered by excessive trim and cut slim through the skirts, fuller at the back with a gentle, curved train. This was the next wave of fashion, I was certain—gowns that were festooned like wedding cakes and so broad in the skirts that the wearer had to slip sideways through doors were looking like tired affectations; the most fashionable women in the city had eschewed the fussiest styles already.

But I had the chance to design a gown for the most renowned noblewoman of our day, and I had undershot, horribly.

“It’s perfect,” she finally said.

My eyes darted from their disappointed gaze, locked on my lap, to Lady Viola. “Really?” I exclaimed without thinking.

To her credit, Viola laughed kindly. “Of course! You’re a genius—so simple, but properly fitted and in a rich fabric—like this satin,” she said as she swiped a piece of blush-pink duchesse, “and it will look positively sumptuous.”

“Thank you,” I stammered. My doubts melted—I had deciphered Viola’s style, and perfectly.

“I may have to make you my personal dressmaker,” Viola said. “So many of them are still … well. They can charge more for three layers of trim and silk ribbon rosettes, I suppose.”

“I wouldn’t worry about them,” I said. “Fashion for gowns and jackets is getting a bit more streamlined, but I foresee elaborate hats being the next big thing. Literally big. They’ll go into millinery.”

Viola laughed and handed me the papers and her chosen swatch. “Perfect. Take the measurements you need.”

I had my favorite tape and notebook, and quickly jotted down Viola’s enviably petite measurements. I had Pellian height, but also Pellian broad shoulders. Delicate Galatine gowns looked perfect on women like Viola with little finagling; I had to adjust proportions widely to get a flattering fit for my larger frame.

“You’ll stay for luncheon, of course,” Viola said as I checked the length of her hemline. “You’ll ruin the seating arrangement if you refuse,” she added. Even though her back was to me, she must have sensed that I was ready to argue.

“I suppose I can stay,” I replied carefully, trying to tread between sounding as cowed by the prospect of a formal lunch with nobles as I was and rudely refusing.

“And—how are my special pieces coming?”

I folded my tape and slipped it into my satchel. “Very well. I’ll have them finished in less than a fortnight.”

“Can you have them finished any faster?” Viola’s voice was rushed. “This unrest is growing, I fear, and there seems little consensus on what to do about it. If I could ask you to expedite my order, I’d be happy to pay an additional fee.”

“No need,” I demurred. “I can have the first set to you tomorrow if you like, and the others—” I did some quick math. “Less than a fortnight.” It meant rearranging my scheduled projects, but it was doable. “May I ask—that is—is there a particular threat to you, my lady?”

“There was an anti-monarchist riot in Fountain Square last week.” Yes, my brother’s demonstration might be considered a riot. Viola’s huge doe-like eyes were suddenly sharply focused, intensely intelligent. “There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of anti-monarchist pamphlets circulating throughout the city—and beyond. Any effort to dissuade the riots only encourages them. This could be a flash in the pan, or a true explosion.”

I nodded, confirming what I knew. I wanted to argue that men like my brother wouldn’t hurt anyone, but I wasn’t so sure anymore. I recalled the violent pamphlet I’d read in this very room. I remember the brick sailing through the air at Kristos’s demonstration, aimed to hurt a soldier. And now, open talk of revolt.

“Yes, you’re right,” I whispered. “I’ll have the first set of underthings to you tomorrow,” I repeated.