21

THE SHADOWS WERE LENGTHENING, AND THE DREARY GRAY OF an early winter evening was settling over the city by the time Emmi and Alice left and I tidied up the atelier, shelving bolts of fabric and putting away my threads. I had to face Pyord and the Public Archive.

The massive building, deep gray and ornately decorated with viciously toothed gargoyles, had never held much appeal for me. I read the humorous articles and poems in the gossip papers and, of course, the Magazine of Style that arrived quarterly at the shop. The thought of dusty tomes, thickly lined with rambling scrollwork text, made my head hurt—there was nothing written in those books for me.

I stepped inside, the heavy outer door of iron filigree giving way with a throaty creak. Three stories of balconies, each lined with shelves, rose around me on three sides. The cavernous vestibule in the center of the building echoed with the sounds of dozens of deliberately quiet people—coughing, sighs, scuffing shoes, hobnails on the stone floors, pages turning with aged crackles.

Tall windows sufficiently illuminated the building in the daylight, but now that the sun was slipping beneath the waves of the harbor outside, the room was filled with shadows. They stretched across long, polished wood tables and raked their fingers on the books that a few studious people were trying to read. I was the only person entering the building; everyone else was leaving.

I shivered. This place, so dark and gray and shadowed, felt cold, even if roaring fires and the steaming water pumped through pipes in the floor and walls kept it warm.

“You’re earlier than I anticipated.” Pyord’s voice snaked around me, reminding me that I couldn’t escape what I was here to do.

“Where to?”

“My, you’re in a hurry,” Pyord said. “We’ve a private room in the back.”

The thought of tucking myself away in a private room with Pyord made my skin crawl. “Don’t you prefer the ambience out here?”

“Doesn’t everyone?” He smiled. His teeth were ordered in perfect rows and very white. “But I’ve asked the curator to set aside a few very particular books, and he has even granted us use of an oil lamp in the private reading space.”

The room he led me to was surprisingly cozy, lacking the grandiose architecture of the rest of the archive and painted a pleasant blue like a robin’s egg. Framed horticultural prints decorated the walls. A cheerful fire crackled in the fireplace, and lamps already sent golden light arcing around the room. The stark table and chair I had expected were replaced with a beautifully carved, if chipped, plush settee.

“Where is the curator?” I asked. I had counted on the benefit of a third person present.

“He isn’t needed,” Pyord replied. “He pulled these volumes for me personally, but did not feel it was necessary to stay.”

I glanced at the leather-bound book already open on the table. It was clearly written in some ancient script. “It’s not?”

“Of course not. I read Pellian better than the curator. And, frankly, given the pointed nature of our study, I didn’t feel it prudent to invite additional parties into the room.”

I swallowed. The cozy room felt suddenly colder. “Professor Venko, why, exactly, am I here? What purpose does this serve?” Our relationship was a contractual one. I would learn to cast curses, do as he asked, and he would set my brother free. I didn’t need the trappings of private Pellian study sessions and special treatment from archive curators. I wanted to get in and get out of our deal, as quickly as possible.

“We aren’t in lecture,” he said, not looking up from the book. “We can dispense with the titles if you prefer to simply use given names.” His tone was friendly, as was the gesture—Galatines liked reminding others of rank using titles—but I didn’t want to be friendly with this man. “I want to show you the origins of charms and curses, and how they are quite linked, using ancient Pellian texts,” he said, leafing through a few pages of the book. I expected to see dust swirling in the lamplight, but it was clean and the pages turned easily.

He beckoned me closer, but I didn’t move. I crossed my arms, skeptical. Pellia was a backwater and had nothing to do with my life in Galitha—I had never needed to learn anything about my home country. If I remembered my ancient history, they controlled much of what was now West Serafe and had outposts in southern Galitha once. That was long ago; now they didn’t even have any thriving trade aside from fish.

“The ancient Pellians were the first to discover that some of their own had the gift of casting. In my limited study of the subject, it seems that descendants of Pellians are still disproportionately gifted. Most other ethnic subgroups, excepting the Serafans, have no interest in magical arts to begin with, so it is difficult to assess. Of course I knew already that you and your brother are Pellian—even if I didn’t, the dark hair, the gold in your complexions. Galatines are much fairer skinned, even the southerners.”

His tone was not unkind, but removed and sterile, and I didn’t appreciate being examined like some anthropological specimen. “Yes, my parents came from Pellia. I was born in Galitha. This doesn’t get us any closer to freeing my brother.” No more information for him—who knew what he could use against me?

Pyord tapped the book in front of him. “That is precisely why we are here. Look at this. See?”

He pointed to an illustration, surrounded by text I couldn’t read. The first image was a lump of clay, the next a flattened disk, and the third showed the same disk covered with designs I wasn’t familiar with, though they looked vaguely like the tablets Emmi and Venia and the others made.

“This is a curse tablet,” Pyord explained. “This one is a charm.” He pointed to an inset picture of a flat engraved disk that looked, to me, identical to the first. “The caster made a disk of clay and then wrote the curse or charm on it.”

“They look the same,” I said.

“They are the same. The process is, as you can see, exactly the same. The only difference is the words on the tablets themselves.”

“But I don’t write charms into anything. There aren’t words or even symbols.”

“That’s because what you do is refined beyond this rudimentary version of casting. You know that already—compare yourself to your casting friends in the coffee shop.” I regretted that he knew them, that I had exposed them to him. He flipped a few pages. “See these?”

The images of flat disks looked identical to the others. “They look the same.”

“They aren’t. The first had words written into them. These are just symbols.”

“Fine. That’s still not what I do.”

He sighed. “Don’t be obdurate, Sophie. It doesn’t suit you.” He paged further into the book, like delving deeper into a cave. “The first casters thought it was the words themselves, and then believed it was the symbols. But tell me, if only the words matter, or getting the right symbols, then anyone could charm cast, couldn’t they?”

“I suppose so,” I said. I had never considered the theory behind charm casting. As soon as I had seen glimmers of light in my mother’s charms, she had taught me the craft. Slowly, at first, and later I had developed the skill with the needle and thread. I had known that other modes of casting could work—sculpting, chanting, singing like the ballad seller’s inadvertent charm—but my mother had never discussed why the process worked. I realized now that she didn’t know. That no one in our chain of casters, perhaps, had known anything more than the pragmatism of pulling a charm into clay or fabric.

That this revolution-bent academic knew more about my gift—my livelihood, my identity—grated me. I breathed anger out through my nose, composing myself. I had to attempt to cooperate for my brother’s sake. Only for his sake.

Pyord turned a page, his attention almost reverent. The book was filled with dense text. I felt lost without even a confusing picture to anchor me. “Incredible, really, how little of this philosophy is explored or understood even by its own practitioners. Scholars in ancient Pellia realized that it wasn’t the words or symbols. It was the process of casting the charm or curse itself. The process of connecting the great external forces of the world with the internal desire.”

I almost laughed at his grandiose words. They weren’t at all how I would have explained charm casting. But as I considered them, they were somewhat accurate. I thought of what I wanted the charm to be, and drew the positive, the light, into the work as I sewed. I could see strands of otherwise invisible light in each finished garment.

“Curse casting is exactly like charm casting,” he said. “Listen: The light forces in the Great External coexist with the dark. Though the dark was discovered first, the light is no harder to attain than the dark.”

“Curse casting was done first?” I interrupted.

Pyord smiled, the expression somehow wise and cynical at once. “Humans’ dark desires emerged far earlier than their more altruistic ones in this particular field. Antiquarians in the field uncover a dozen buried Pellian curse disks wishing their neighbors’ crops to fail for every one we find blessing their own crops.”

“But why?” I asked, brow furrowing. I didn’t think people were that horrible, on the whole. Pyord was the exception, not the rule.

“I’ve studied this extensively, but there aren’t any claims made by the ancient Pellians themselves. My working theory is that curses are not only more powerful magic; they are also able to be wielded in more precise and therefore more effective ways.” I thought of Mr. Bursin and his mother-in-law. I could have cursed her to die, and that would have solved his problem directly. Instead, I could send only vague goodwill toward his wife through a charm.

“Perhaps true,” I admitted. “But that doesn’t answer for me how I’m supposed to turn charm casting into curse casting.”

“Ah, but it does. When a caster elicits positive desires from the external forces, he draws a kind of tangible light into the tablet itself, invisible to most eyes but of visible substance to the caster,” he read. “Is that accurate?”

I swallowed. Having my process explained academically made me uncomfortable, as though Pyord had some kind of power over me. Nothing I did was a secret to him. “Fairly accurate.”

“Then you need only refocus your requests of the external forces. In contrast,” he continued reading, “the caster who creates a curse draws a dark substance into the tablet.”

“That’s it. I just change what I think about, and suddenly I can cast curses?”

“So simple, isn’t it?”

“Why should I believe you?” I shoved my chair back and stood, arms crossed. “You know as well as I do that I can’t read that. You could be making the whole thing up and I wouldn’t know any difference.”

“That’s true. I didn’t show you this to prove anything to you but that I understand, intimately, your art. That I know it better than you do.”

“You’ve proven that you can make up a nice story based on Pellian texts,” I said, but his words shook me.

“You can test my theory easily.” Pyord’s lips narrowed. “And I expect you to.”

I began to argue, but he was right. When I found I couldn’t draw darkness into a garment, he might not believe me, but at least I would have done all I could.

“Fine. I’ll try. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“You had best avoid any attempts at tricking me.” Pyord’s eyes narrowed. “I know this can be done. So if you ‘try’ and then claim failure, I will know you didn’t truly make an attempt. I expect results.”

My hands met the rough stone wall behind me, and I realized I’d backed away from him. “I have every intention of holding true to our bargain for Kristos’s sake,” I said in a low, angry whisper. “But I can’t be held responsible for doing things I’m unable to.”

Pyord cocked his head, his gaze nearly paternal and entirely unwelcome. “You’re capable of so much more than you know, Sophie. So much more.”

I seethed under his patronizing smile.

“Your next step, of course, alongside learning your new skill, is to obtain a commission from the royal family. You spend enough time playing at Lady Viola Snowmont’s house. I am confident you will come into the acquaintance of the queen or princess soon.” His brows rose as though he’d just remembered something, but I assumed it might as well have been an act.

“I can’t guarantee that. I have many clients among the nobility, but—”

“I have no doubts a commission can be arranged. You seem on exceptionally friendly terms with certain highly influential members of the nobility. You have not only called on the Lady Snowmont’s personal residence to do business—quite familiar behavior, I must say—you and the First Duke are on quite friendly terms, it seems.”

I tried for words, but none came.

Pyord shrugged. “Yes, I had you followed. Insurance, you know. My man saw the duke’s servant, in his full livery, at your shop.” I recalled the man hovering outside my door in patched breeches, whom I had assumed to be a common gawker, and felt ill with the violation of my privacy. “You don’t tailor men’s clothing, so I assume the visit was personal.”

“That seems to be more than insurance,” I managed to say through clenched teeth.

“It’s almost amusing, really, that a seamstress can worm her way into circles that a learned man cannot.” Pyord’s smile was cold.

Was Pyord jealous? I considered my words carefully. Angering him wouldn’t benefit me now. “I suppose there is always a line between those of noble and non-noble families, even at the university.”

“Despite my reputation and publications, despite everything I have achieved in my field.” He flared, then reconsidered. His cool demeanor returned. “Yes. I have professional acquaintances, of course, of noble birth, but one does not socialize outside of one’s station at the university. And given my birth, I will never be anything more than a subordinate lecturer.”

I could appreciate his motivations—snubbed by the nobility, never elevated to equality with them in spite of working alongside them. And he was learned—he knew the downsides of our particular system, had studied the potential for others. The ancient Pellians, I remembered Kristos saying, were more democratic in their form of governance. Perhaps the modern revolution Pyord wanted had been born out of reading ancient texts. I considered, again, his demands of me, and his intentions to assassinate the king. A learned man, a seemingly ethical man, yet willing to incorporate dark magic and murder into his plans—it was paradoxical. Or, I considered as evenly as I could, perhaps it wasn’t. I couldn’t fathom believing in the seedlings of a cause so intensely that I was willing to do anything—truly anything—to see it blossom. Pyord did, and would water the seeds of revolt with whatever blood they required.

And he had Kristos. I imagined what he could have done to him already, what sort of horrid cellar or drafty attic he might have him imprisoned in. The taunts and intimidation he surely threw at him to keep him as compliant as possible, as he did with me.

“I want proof.”

“What?” Pyord’s forehead wrinkled with surprise.

“Proof my brother is alive, proof he’s well. I want him to write me a letter. I want him to seal it and to sign over the seal.”

“I could force him to write whatever I wanted,” he said with a lilting smile, but the amusement was forced.

“You could. But you know as well as I that Kristos has his own voice in his writing.”

Pyord ceded the point with a nod. “He’s gifted enough that I could not copy him—and you know him better than I.”

I hoped, fervently, that Kristos could slip details or warnings to me into his writing. Maybe he could give me some hint of where he was being held, or even what the plot against the king entailed. If nothing else, I would have some assurance of his safety. “So you will provide me with a letter from him. Soon.”

“All right. I’ll acquiesce, if only to prove to you that I do have him and that he will be punished if you do not do precisely what I ask.” There was a cruel glint in his smile. I hoped I hadn’t put Kristos in more danger.

“Thank you.” There was no gratitude in my voice.

“I will contact you soon, and I expect a report on your progress with curse casting. And I shall have your letter for you.” Then he put out the lamp and closed the book.