29

I CLATTERED THROUGH THE STREETS, MOVING AS QUICKLY AS I could without looking like a common thief, running from the only thing I wanted. I returned to the shop, barely looked at Alice or Penny, and gathered the shifts Alice had cut for the princesses. I would stay up tonight sewing them, I resolved. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be able to sleep anyway.

I didn’t want to see anyone, but I had planned to meet Nia at the archive, and I forced myself to remember that understanding curses was more important to the state of the entire nation than my petty heartbreak over a duke. Nia waited in the vestibule of the archive, as still as a statue with her ostrich-plume hat balanced on her lap.

“I had the curator pull some books,” she said without any further greeting. “It appears my tutor already requested some of them, so they were easy to find.” I didn’t reply—Pyord had used those books to convince me of my ability to cast curses. If she didn’t know any more about their content, I didn’t want to tip her off to what I’d learned from them. I hoped I could trust that she wouldn’t tell Pyord—that she wasn’t, in fact, allied with him to begin with. But no—there was no way she knew what he truly was.

The curator had set a few tomes aside, not in the private room I’d used with Pyord, but in an alcove flanked by windows and equipped with a long table and a pair of chairs. “What can I do?” I asked.

“You can tell me exactly what you want to find,” Nia said, slipping a pair of crisp white gloves over her dark hands.

Apparently my vague request wasn’t going to suffice with Nia. “I think there might be a way to undo charms,” I said, forcing some neutrality into my voice to hide my nerves. “I’m concerned it could compromise my business.”

“A way to undo charms,” Nia repeated, leafing through the first book. “This won’t help us—nothing about charms, it’s all about various curses.” She raised a black eyebrow at me. “Which doesn’t concern you.”

I hesitated. “The process is very likely the same. If that book has anything about undoing curses it would be … maybe helpful?”

“It doesn’t. There’s no theory here, just directions for writing curses into tablets.” She shrugged. “This is how research goes—you hit a lot of dead ends and read a lot of material that’s not useful.” She was already reaching for another book, and she squinted with interest at the page. There was something exciting for Nia about the hunt—even if it was through a stack of old books.

“There aren’t many books here,” I said, surveying the table. “What if none of them have what we need?”

“If none of them have what you want,” Nia said pointedly, “we can ask the curator to do another search.” She grinned. “That’s what makes research such fun.”

“Fun, of course.”

“Yes, well, everyone’s definition of fun is a little different. How, exactly,” she said, looking up at me, “would knowing how charms are undone help you?”

“If someone undid my charms, I’d know,” I replied weakly.

“I’m not even sure I should help you with this,” she sighed. My heart skipped. “A charm caster who can undo her work? That seems like a conflict of interest. You could extort people to put charms back in. Not that you would,” she added hastily, “but it’s an ethical conundrum, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t do that,” I said.

“Maybe not, but theoretically, it would be possible. Plausible, even.”

I tried to match Nia’s detached logic. “But if someone else undid a charm, it would be unprofessional of me to not realize it, to not know how to redo it effectively. And besides,” I added as I realized it, “if I knew how it was done, perhaps I could build in prevention.”

“Perhaps,” Nia said. “Here’s something. It’s a counter-curse—does that help?”

“What does that mean?”

“It reverts whatever was charmed or cursed in an item to the creator of the charm or curse.”

I clamped my mouth shut—that was the last thing I wanted to do, but if it was my only option, perhaps I could take it. I wasn’t being targeted; bad luck might not end in my death like it would for the royal family.

“It might be of interest,” I said. “Maybe I could figure out more about the theory from it?”

“Maybe. I’ll mark the page number and translate it later.” She kept paging, and I felt more and more nervous. Nia’s interest seemed to increase as she read, as though she had found some kernel of academic fascination in this topic after all.

She stopped, and wrinkled her brow as she read. “I think this is what you’re looking for,” she said. “It’s how a caster can remove a charm and replace it with a curse,” she explained as she read, “but it’s in two steps. The first is just removing the charm.”

“That’s exactly it,” I said, overly excited. “I mean, the part about removing. That’s what I was worried could be done.”

“All right. Let me see if I can figure this out,” she began. “The text talks about the light matter tied into the charmed object. Does that make sense?”

“Yes, perfect sense.”

“Sounds like gibberish to me, but I’ll trust you,” she said. “It’s a long passage. I’ll have to translate the whole thing. Pellian grammatical structures are different from ours—it makes translating quickly difficult.” She pulled her gaze from the ink and parchment. “It’s easier to translate into modern Pellian than Galatine. Should I do that instead? I’d be able to manage that far more.”

I blushed. “I don’t speak Pellian,” I replied.

“I’m sorry. I had assumed.” She bowed her head in apology for her imagined slight.

“It’s a fair assumption. But I—I was born in Galitha.” I recalled the earliest years in my household, rarely hearing Pellian except when my parents wanted to say something outside of my brother’s and my hearing. Pellian was their secret language, and I never learned more than a few phrases useful in a marketplace or, I thought with a smile, the catchall Pellian profanity my father expelled on a fairly regular basis. “My parents—we only spoke Galatine together.” They thought it was best, to acclimate us, and perhaps to appear more Galatine themselves.

“Then I’ll have to do it piecemeal and then put it all together again.” It sounded like a lot of work, but Nia looked excited at the prospect.

“That would be very helpful, if you don’t mind,” I said. I hoped she didn’t mind.

“Not at all! It’s excellent practice. I can have the translation to you—well, I have to leave in just a few minutes tonight, and then tomorrow is the charades party at Pauline’s—I hate charades but it’s her birthday so I think I’m stuck …” She ticked days off on her fingers. “I’ll have time before Viola’s music evening. I’ll bring it then. You’re going, aren’t you? I assumed you must be coming,” she said.

A social gathering while my brother remained prisoner and I had a curse to cast. “Oh, I have been so busy lately, so I don’t suppose—”

“Busy! Take an evening off, Thimble Thumb!” Nia said with a smile. “You really should come. Marguerite is going to unveil one of her new harp compositions, and Viola talked Theodor into bringing his violin. He’s quite modest about it, but he’s very accomplished.”

I stared into my hands at the mention of his name. “Of course he is.” I sighed. “Very well, Nia, I—thank you.”

She raised an eyebrow and laughed. “It’s really not an imposition at all. You’re thanking me as though I deserve the National Medal.”

If only she knew.

“In all honesty, this was interesting—added another dimension to my studies. I’ll have to tell Pyord about the prevalence of curses over charms in these books.”

I smiled, unsettled. I didn’t want Pyord knowing I’d been learning more about Pellian curse theory—and certainly didn’t want him to know I was trying to undo the curse I’d cast. Not to mention that it could put Nia in danger.

“How well do you know your tutor?” I asked as innocently as I could.

“Not well,” Nia replied. “He’s a very secretive man.” Her deep brown eyes developed a strange, dreamy look. “I’d like to know him better.”

I almost burst out laughing. Nia had feelings for Pyord! I controlled myself. “He is a lecturer at the university, no?”

“That’s right. I started attending lectures there when my father first brought me to Galitha. I was bored here; I hadn’t yet met Viola and the others at the salon. He was … so interesting.” Nia stared off into the dust motes, smiling vaguely.

I wondered, briefly, if he had hoped to recruit Nia. From the daydreams crisscrossing Nia’s face, it was clear to me that he hadn’t tried.

“I had studied Pellian at home, but my tutors were all limited in their knowledge. When I asked if he would consider taking a woman on as a private student, he agreed. My father, at first—” She bit her lip. “He doesn’t trust Galatine morals overmuch. But he agreed. Pyord has proven the perfect gentleman,” she added, faint disappointment coloring her voice.

I groped for something to say, something that didn’t indicate I knew him better than Nia did. “He is unmarried?”

“Yes, he said once that he was married to his work. He left Kvyset for his research like a man leaves his childhood home for his wife, he said.” She smiled. “And I had the impression he didn’t socialize much. I would assume he was a homebody, but I invited him to the salon once, and he seemed … perturbed by the idea of being around nobles. I wondered if there was some old but deep slight, or some history, with the nobility. Perhaps a particular noble, I couldn’t say.”

I imagined Nia, scientific in her precision as she parsed the limited phrases Pyord gave her, forming keen conclusions about a man who revealed little. Pyord clearly maintained no fondness for Kvyset, and his frustration with the nobility’s hold on the university and his inability to advance his career was clear. That could be the extent of it; Pyord wanted more importance than either his home country or his adopted nation would grant him. I wondered, however, if Nia was right, that some more personal grievance danced behind his stony façade as well.

In either case, their acquaintance was a liability. “I’d actually appreciate it if you didn’t mention my research to him,” I said. “In fact, I’d like to keep this quiet altogether.”

“Why?” Nia asked, snapping back to attention. The faraway look was gone.

“I make my business based on indelible charms. It’s not false advertising—I didn’t realize they could be broken until now. But if word got out that people could undo them …”

“I see,” Nia said, measured. “I’ll keep mum.”