36

“YOU DON’T NEED TO DO THIS,” I WHISPERED AS THEODOR HELD my hand in the carriage.

“I think I do,” he replied. He held up my hand, which was visibly shaking. “I saw Nia last week—I hardly know what to think.”

I knew exactly what to think, but I shook my head. “I’m afraid,” I said without meaning to. Theodor moved closer to me, but I still felt cold. The carriage wheels made a hollow echo as we crossed a bridge—over the river, I realized, looking down. The river was broad and choked with silt here near the sea. The brown eddies and whorls carried leaves and scraps of paper and one dead catfish past me. The river never stopped moving—it slowed here near its mouth, but it couldn’t be halted. Pyord’s plan felt that way now. I couldn’t stop him from whatever he planned at the Midwinter Ball, or anything that followed it.

Pyord still held my brother. I had finished the shawl. I had no leverage. I could end up in the river just as Nia had. Theodor could be condemned to the same fate. I couldn’t stop it.

“I’m not going until after Midwinter,” Theodor said.

“What?”

“To the Allied Equatorial States. I’m not going until late winter. And now, after what happened to Nia, perhaps not at all.” He glanced out of the window. A knot of Red Caps loitered by a tavern. I turned my face from them. “A diplomat’s daughter killed here—it doesn’t help us maintain our international allies.”

“Is that what you’re thinking about?” I demanded.

“No. I’m thinking about how she was always willing to go over my research with me, how she gave me seeds from her family’s garden. I haven’t even planted them yet.” He pressed his mouth into a thin line. “I’m sorry, Sophie, but I can’t—”

“It’s all right,” I said, finally gripping his hand in return. “Take me to the Stone Castle,” I said, resolution building back in my voice after the shock of hearing about Nia. “I have business there.”

“Business? Please, Sophie, don’t make me leave you alone after this.”

I searched his hazel eyes. Something in them made me agree. “If you want to come with me, you may.”

The carriage drew to a halt in front of the imposing Stone Castle, once a fortress, when Galitha City was young, now a barracks and a jail.

“You don’t have to come with me,” I said, reticent even now to let Theodor see the business I had to attend to.

“Of course I don’t have to,” he replied, hopping out of the carriage as nimbly as a squirrel. “I want to.”

Somehow, the thought of arguing with a clerk in front of Theodor made me more nervous than facing them by myself. I couldn’t trust myself to stay calm, not to break down in tears or shouts of anger. I gathered my nerves and marched up to the counter blocking the rest of the Stone Castle from the vestibule. A thin-lipped, tired clerk of the guard drummed his fingers on the dark wooden surface.

“You are holding my employee here, and I ask for her release. I will pay her bond if need be.”

Theodor, hovering behind me, coughed. I ignored him.

“Name,” drawled the clerk.

“Mine or hers?”

He looked up at me. “Hers,” he said after a confused pause. “Her name.”

“Penny Lestrouse.”

He flipped slowly through a stack of papers. The rustle of paper tracked like the second hand of a clock, methodical and impossible to hasten. I gripped the counter, frustration mounting. Theodor wisely kept his distance.

“She’s being held in block B6,” he announced, as though this meant anything to me.

“Yes?”

“Political block. I can’t release her without confirmation paperwork from the Lord of Keys.”

When Viola had argued for my shop to reopen, why hadn’t she argued for the release of my employee? Why didn’t she care more about Penny, cold and scared in a dark cell, than about my shop? I was important enough, elevated enough to help, but not a mere commoner like Penny?

She hadn’t even thought about it, I realized. It wasn’t cruelty. It was blindness.

“She is a girl. She works for me. She’s—she’s not dangerous.”

The clerk just stared balefully. “I can’t release anyone from B6 without paperwork.”

“What about an order from the Duke of Westland?”

I didn’t know until that moment that one could feel furious and relieved, grateful to someone while despising what they did. The clerk scrambled to his feet—he would stand for the Duke of Westland, but not for a seamstress. He would shuffle his papers at breakneck speed and find the order for release for Theodor, but not for me.

“Let me see that,” Theodor ordered. The clerk handed him the stack of papers—block B6 intake forms—with shaking hands. Theodor flipped through them, locating Penny’s and setting aside several others. “These are all girls under eighteen years of age,” he said, gesturing at the dates of birth entered at the top of each page on the pile. “Why are they being held?”

“They are political adversaries,” the clerk replied weakly.

“I’ll be speaking to the Lord of Keys about this,” Theodor said sternly, as though he were in control of the situation. His wide eyes told me that even he was surprised. “These girls will be released under my order, tonight.”

He watched the clerk fill out each order, and signed them himself. I wondered if there was any risk for him, what political capital he was expending to release these girls and Penny, if any. A guard led all of them from the dark hallway beyond the vestibule moments later, and Penny met my eyes with new understanding imbuing her surprise at being released.

“You?” she asked, standing a few leery feet from me.

“I tried,” I answered. “It was Theodor, actually, who—”

“Of course it was,” she said caustically. “I should have known it would take the influence of a noble.” I wanted to argue with her, to implore her to be more gracious, but she was right. I had done nothing. I was purely ineffectual here, and the system only bent for the nobility.

“At any rate, I will come by to collect my pay by the end of the week,” she added.

“What? Penny, I’m not firing you. I have no reason—”

“Of course you have no reason. I’m quitting. I can’t work for you anymore, madame. Not with who you work for. Not after this.”

My mouth went dry, but I couldn’t find a good reason to compel her to come back. “I’m sorry to see you go, Penny.”

She screwed her mouth into a tight line, and I realized she was trying not to cry. Swiftly, I excused Theodor and myself, and we escaped back to the carriage.