44

I HUDDLED IN THE CELL IN THE STONE CASTLE ON A THIN STRAW tick that smelled faintly of summer and strongly of mold. The guard, taking pity on a woman who didn’t look like a hardened criminal, had clandestinely slipped me extra blankets. I wondered if they had been so kind to Penny, or if she, a political prisoner, had been treated less humanely. Even with the blankets, the cloying cool of the cell settled into my bones.

Hot humiliation countered the cold, however. For Pyord to believe I wasn’t a threat, he had to know I’d been arrested. I was sure he had eyes all over the city, but I had to be sure the rumor would reach him quickly. So I had gone to the square, packed with Red Caps, and the City Guard had tracked me down, loudly. Once everyone in the square had managed to find a spot to gawk at my arrest, the soldiers dragged me off.

Possibly the most humiliating part of the whole affair was the false reason—an expired permit. I had always prided myself on my perfect record with paperwork, and had just stood in line for hours to renew all of my permits. Still, we had to select a reason for arrest that wouldn’t alarm Pyord, and a bureaucratic blunder did the trick, and the arrest had to be loud and obvious. Moreover, the arrest of a common shop owner for a paperwork error, especially one who had already been maligned for ties to the rebellion, was sure to further inflame the Red Caps—they were more likely to use it as rhetoric than ask questions. And so Pyord was bound to hear, and soon, that Sophie Balstrade was held in the Stone Castle.

The squat stone building served as the city’s guardhouse, barracks for the City Guard, and, carved into the bedrock below it, dungeons. I shivered—the cells beneath the ground were notoriously cold, hard places that no one escaped from. I wasn’t trying to escape, but the thought of being locked up like a rat in a trap didn’t sit well with me, either.

Only one day. Nothing so bad I can’t handle it for one day, I thought to myself in a hollow attempt at reassurance. I could use the time to think through my plan and practice lifting curses.

Daylight had faded from the cell, however, and even I couldn’t sew in the pitch black that descended into the room. I lay on the straw tick, bundling blankets around myself, fighting off dark thoughts, dangerous thoughts. That this was where I belonged, that I deserved nothing better than death for my involvement in Pyord’s plans. My business was making charms, influencing fate. How much fate could one influence? I wondered. Could I have escaped this one? I doubted even one of my strongest charms could have changed this outcome.

As I lay there in the cold, listening to echoes in the stone halls, I remembered an old story my mother told Kristos and me when we were little. I remembered the scent of harbor drifting into the window of the flat our little family used to rent, and tried to ignore the musty air and foul wafts from other cells that assaulted me. She liked to tell stories, my mother—stories she said her mother had told her. This one was about three sisters, the most powerful charm casters who ever lived. They lived in a shack by the seaside, my mother said, and would cast a charm in spun wool for anyone who came to them, free of charge. But their charms were so strong that they angered the gods—this was a very old story, she always stopped to remind us, when the people believed in many gods—and one day the god of the sea sent a great tempest to sweep their shack out into the waves.

This seemed unjust to the goddess of spinning and weaving, however, and she caught them up, all three, and gave them a job to do in her own house. The eldest spun the wool of every man and woman’s life into thread. The middle sister wove it together with others’ lives, creating a web of connections, one person to another. And the youngest, when a person’s life was done, cut the thread.

I always shuddered a little at that line of Mother’s story—the part where she would bring her fingers together like scissors, snapping them shut in a decisive metaphor for death. But it was only a story, a version of the world in which Fate determined everything. There was a contradiction in the story itself, because the women were charm casters, influencing fate before they became Fate. Surely our destiny wasn’t predetermined by three women spinning and weaving, or by anything else.

I fell asleep and dreamt of drop spindles making thread out of liquid light and sparkling dark, looms spread with charmed tapestries, half-finished, and a devilish Pyord sneaking beneath it, snipping threads with golden scissors.

With the first light that crept through the slits set high into the wall that served in place of windows, I took up my needle and began to work. I had my sewing kit in my pocket and no one had thought to take it from me. So I practiced. I stitched curses and charms into the scraps of fabric I had been given, and then undid them, over and over again. At first, dark smudges and stains of light remained on the fabric. As I practiced, I removed more and more of the curses, and charms were unbound from the fabric and disappeared.

My speed improved as well, but I hoped it would be quick enough to undo the thousands of stitches I had worked into the queen’s shawl. When I considered the hours of work creating the curse had taken, and considered that I would be lucky to have ten minutes to work at the ball, I felt queasy.

Food arrived three times—a stale roll for breakfast, a thin soup and another stale roll at midday, and a stale roll with dried beef for supper. I wondered if the jailer had some kind of agreement to buy stale bread from a local baker.

The light had faded from my cell when Theodor opened my door. He wore a dark greatcoat, as though this would disguise his identity from anyone who intercepted us. This seemed unlikely, however; the corridor was empty, and all the other cell doors were firmly closed and bolted. I wanted, more than anything, to kiss him, to feel some warmth come back into me after the long darkness of the cold night alone. But there was no time, and Theodor couldn’t be seen in these halls allowing me to escape after orchestrating my arrest the day before.

“This way,” he said in a low voice.

He led me down the narrow hallway, lined with cells. They were full, mostly with more than one inmate in each iron-barred room. “All right. What I’m about to show you is a secret—most nobles don’t even know about it. There are several tunnels and hidden passages in the Stone Castle that lead into the streets.”

“To make jailbreaks easier?” I asked.

“To make assembling and forming outside easier for the soldiers quartered here.” Of course—the top floors of the Stone Castle were soldiers’ barracks, usually housing only City Guard but now filled with regulars, riflemen, and grenadiers, with even more encamped outside. Theodor opened a door and led me into a narrow hallway. “Privilege of being the son of the current heir to the throne—I get my own set of keys to this place.”

He led me down a winding hall that ended with another door. This one was locked, and he fished a minute silver key from his ring. The lock clinked open.

“You’ll come out of a small doorway at the edge of River Street,” he said, and handed me the key. “You’ll need this—the door is locked. Make sure no one sees you.”

“Believe me—I will.”

“I have to hurry—the Lord of Keys called several of us to meet with him before the ball. He’s taking your suggestion that the clock strikes for the coup at Midwinter quite seriously.” He grinned and gripped my arm. “This is going to work, Sophie. We’ll get through this.”

He hesitated and looked down the empty hallway, then ducked his head and brushed my lips with his. I caught his warm hand with my freezing fingers and pulled him closer. “Good luck,” he whispered, and then he closed the door behind me.

I ran—or, rather, trotted, for the corridor was narrow and rutted—until I reached the door at the other end. I cracked it open, ascertained that the street was clear, and slipped out onto the cobblestones.

Now to get myself to a royal ball.

There was, of course, one problem. I didn’t have a gown. I almost laughed at the dismal absurdity of it—a seamstress, unable to go to the ball because she didn’t have a dress. I had a nice gown, of course, the one I had worn for dinner at Theodor’s, the pretty blue silk I pulled out for weddings and parties. It was a nice dress. But it wasn’t a court gown.

I was going to have to break one of my rules—never, ever using client commissions for personal use. Because Madame Pliny and I shared fairly close dimensions, and her court gown stood finished in a corner of the atelier, waiting on a mannequin for a few final sequins to be added.

No time for that. I slipped through back alleys to my shop, fished a key from my pocket, and dashed inside. I carefully pulled the gown from the form, its cream silk shimmering in the lamplight, the pale pink flowers I’d carefully embroidered with their gold sequin centers spreading under my hands like a bouquet. Like rose balsam, I thought with a faint smile. Thank heavens she didn’t need it until spring—and that she was wintering in the south and wouldn’t be at the Midwinter Ball to see me arrive in her gown.

“What are you doing?” I started and nearly knocked the mannequin over, but the voice was just Penny’s. She watched me with saucer eyes. “I thought someone might be here even though it’s Midwinter.” Someone—not me, not while I was locked in the Stone Castle. She had hoped to catch Alice or Emmi and avoid speaking to me again. I didn’t blame her.

“I just came for my pay,” she continued. She could scarce afford not to collect the wages I owed her—with winter approaching, I wondered what she intended to do for work. Few shops were hiring anyone, save day laborers, and those wages would never come close to what she had earned with me. I thought for the briefest moment about offering her job back to her, but she stared at me with such frozen dismissal in her deep blue eyes that I refrained. “And I’ll leave my key,” she added, as if it were the final punctuation to any question I might have raised, any proposal I might have made.

I reached under the counter and found the silk bag I’d sewn for her, charmed with wealth and luck, to put her final wages in. I handed it to her, fully aware that her eyes were on the swish and drape of the court gown’s silk rather than her pay. “I’m—it’s too much to explain, Penny. Don’t tell anyone I was here. Not even Kristos.” Panic edged my voice—all our plans came down to Penny keeping her mouth shut.

“Why are you taking the gown?”

Please, Penny, I begged silently. Please have enough leftover loyalty to me not to say anything to my brother. Please.

“Because I need a court gown and I don’t have one.”

She eyed me warily. “You were arrested, and now you need a court gown?”

“Yes.” That was the plain truth of it. I didn’t have time to argue. “Please, Penny. Keep to yourself tonight. Keep off the streets. Stay here if you want to.”

“You’re going to the ball,” she guessed.

“Yes. Please, Penny—just don’t tell anyone.”

She nodded. “All right.” She understood. I hoped she understood.

“Thank you,” I said. She tucked the bag with her pay under her cloak and left, the door banging a hollow farewell behind her.

I was breaking yet another of my personal rules by wearing a charm, as well, but I was faintly grateful. I could use the good luck imbued in the embroidered flowers. I set the gown gently on a worktable and then wrestled the cage worn under the skirts from the mannequin. I gathered the whole mess in my arms and bolted out the door.

I would have looked ridiculous, shoes clattering on cobblestones, wire skirt supports bobbing in the wind, and supple cream silk waving like a flag, but I kept to back alleys and side streets to avoid anyone seeing me. I couldn’t afford to have Pyord hear that I was freed now. I careened into Theodor’s courtyard, winded and my hair a mess, and after a moment’s hesitation, pounded on the peacock-blue door.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that he answered himself. “I made it in time, didn’t I?”

“Indeed you did.” Theodor found my hand in the pile of pale silk and squeezed it. “I suppose you need to change.”

I nodded and pushed past him through the door, the skirt supports pinging faintly as they caught on the hinges and sprang loose again. Theodor backed away with an amused look, letting me wrestle myself into the front hallway.

“Are you all right? I can hardly forgive myself for making you stay in that place last night,” he said, ushering me to a small parlor. I threw the skirt support on an ottoman and carefully laid the dress on the settee.

“It wasn’t someplace I want to visit again soon,” I said, still breathless. My ribs pressed against my corset. I was acutely aware for the first time how much sweat was dripping down my back. “But it’s over.”

“And you’d rather not discuss it,” Theodor supplied.

“Precisely.” I waited. “Theodor, I need to change. Without an audience.” The underpinnings and lacings of the court gown were complex enough without attempting a conversation at the same time.

He glanced at the bloated pile of silk encroaching on his furniture. “Of course. Lend you a maid?”

“Fine.”

Dressing for a royal ball, in a sumptuous silk gown, should have been an event unto itself, but I didn’t have time for niceties. I had my jacket off and the wire support fastened before the flustered maid Theodor hustled into the room even arrived. Her apron was crisscrossed with gravy stains and she smelled, faintly, of onion. He had clearly pulled her from duty in the scullery. She helped me into the full skirt, then laced the back of the gown’s bodice without speaking. I could feel her hands shaking as she threaded the bodkin through the eyelets. I willed her to work faster.

“Miss?” she whispered as I adjusted the sleeves. Madame Pliny was narrower in the shoulders than I—the fit wasn’t perfect. Only a seamstress would notice or care so much, I chided myself. But the shoulders drooped lower than I would have liked.

“It will have to do,” I said firmly.

“But, miss—it’s quite disarrayed,” the maid said. I was ready to argue, when she added, “Your hair. I can dress it quite quickly if—”

“Yes, quickly.” My heart beat against the tight boned bodice. Quickly was important. But she was right. I couldn’t very well march into a royal ball looking like I’d had my hair dressed with a rake.

She hurried out, a slim little blur of gray wool and white apron, and returned promptly with several wool rollers stuffed fat with batting and a large sheet. “Where did you find those?” I asked. I didn’t imagine that Theodor dressed his hair in anything other than a simple queue.

“They’re mine,” she replied, threw the sheet over my shoulders to protect the gown, and set to work.

“I’ll be sure they’re returned,” I said, then my mouth fell open while I watched her work in the small mirror hanging over the fireplace. She mercilessly combed the tangles from my hair, dosed my hair with sweet-scented pomade and powder, and then rolled sections onto the wool pieces, creating the towering hairstyle favored in court.

“I don’t suppose you have anything to put in it,” she said, pinning a curl into place. “Jewelry or a ribbon or—”

“How about flowers?” Theodor stood in the doorway, smiling softly. He held a bunch of rose balsam in his hand. “I saw that the gown had pink flowers, and these were in the dining room, doing nothing but dying.”

“Perfect,” I said.

“Flowers aren’t really fashionable this time of year—” the maid began, then flushed fuchsia and fetched them from Theodor.

“Are you a scullery maid or a hairstylist?” I asked with a small laugh. She was right—fresh flowers were considered a bit pastoral and simple for a winter formal ball.

“Just a scullery maid, but maybe someday, a hairstylist,” she said. She knew her aspirational trade well. She pinned blossoms at precise spots to highlight the sculptural shapes my hair created. The rose balsam matched the embroidered flowers precisely, as though I had known when I stitched them to blend the colors and form the leaves just so.

“You’re ready?” Theodor asked. I stood in front of the tiny mirror, craning my neck to see all the angles of the gown. I couldn’t quite get a full picture.

“I think so,” I said, adding, “and thank you,” to the scullery maid who was already disappearing down the hall.

“You are,” he confirmed, taking my hand in his and turning me slowly. “You look a vision.” I could have brushed off his words, but his face, faintly stunned and smiling like an idiot, told me his compliments were not exaggerated.

“Then we should hurry,” I said, leaving my gaol-stained clothes on the ottoman and wrapping myself in my cloak, which was still in the hall where I had dropped it.

Theodor’s carriage was waiting, the horses dancing with excitement, their coats gleaming. I gulped—arranging a draped skirt like the one I was wearing on a mannequin was one thing, but avoiding rumpling it in a carriage’s narrow seats? I sat as gracefully as possible, mindful of the silk, but the frame underneath pinched my thighs. I had made a fair number of court gowns over the years, but I had never worn one. I wondered if there was some trick to moving and sitting in them, or if the women who wore them simply got used to being uncomfortable.

“What next?” Theodor said, his singular focus homing in on the task ahead of us. I caught his hand in mine. Seeing the little wrinkle form between his eyes—it was as though he were scrutinizing a bed of flowers or playing his violin, not about to stop an assassination attempt. And I loved that about him.

“I have to undo the curse.” I ticked off what we knew like items on a list. “If anything bad happens at the ball, it will affect her. And, by extension, her husband. Pyord’s real target.” Like the charmed caps I had made for my brother would offer some protection to those near the wearer, the cursed shawl would bleed onto the king seated next to the queen, drawing darkness toward him.

“As a mere point of clarification—anything? Like if there are bad prawns, she’ll get sick?”

I hadn’t thought of it this way before, but Theodor was right. “Yes. Anything—the assassination attempt or just chance.”

“Whatever he’s planning, it can’t be precise enough that he felt comfortable without your curse as a safety net.” Theodor stopped and thought for a moment. “So we need to be prepared for quite a few possibilities. Bad prawns notwithstanding.”

“Exactly. I need to pull the curse off the shawl.” I heaved a deep breath. “And that’s where I need your help.”

“Anything.”

“First, when and where. I haven’t ever been to a formal ball, you know. You’re going to have to guide me—where I can sneak off to work the reversal, when it wouldn’t be noticed.”

“During the meal, most certainly. The king and queen will be presented, along with the entire royal family, just before the meal begins. The king and queen will sit on a dais in the center of the room for the duration of dinner.”

“How long is dinner?” I chewed my lip. The longer the better.

“Probably four or six courses—not terribly long.”

“That sounds like an eternity,” I replied.

“Not compared to state dinners and wedding feasts. Twelve, fourteen courses—land sakes, you get sick of food.” Theodor stopped himself. “Sometimes I can see why the revolutionaries want us dead,” he added ruefully.

“But four to six courses—what, an hour? Two?”

“Perhaps two for us, less for the royal family. They’ll be served first, while we wait.”

“And when they’re finished—”

“They might leave the dais.”

“And I’ll lose my work. So I need to finish during the dinner, while the queen is in full view of me. Where?”

“That we’ll have to figure out when we get there.”