7.

The courtyard was a precise square built into the center of the manor house. It lay at the bottom of a shaft cut straight through the building, four stories tall, with the balconies and terraces above spiraling toward its greenhouse roof, crowned by a mighty cut-glass skylight. The doors to the outside had been propped open, letting warm Sevenmonth air plume in on a cross-breeze.

The garden itself was geometric, a tribute to mathematical ingenuity and horticultural patience, with statues arranged under trailing ivies like points on a graph. There were well-trimmed hedges and tiers of tall, fronded plants Rowena suspected came from the tropics, someplace far from Corma and its salt winds and coal-black dusk. Purple lilies with white throats and pale yellow something-or-others grew on lovely, twining trellises until they reached the stone pillars of the spiraling floors above, joining with moss and ivy, the last evidence of wilderness in their well-trained forms.

The boy conducted Rowena to a stone bench and knelt down before her. She stared at him in the moonlight. His sandy brown hair looked rough and tousled, as if whatever he’d done to slick it back hours before had come as undone as Rowena’s combs. It drifted down into eyes of an oddly familiar shape, like the Nipponese traders Rowena had seen around the docks and quays of Oceanside. He tossed his head to cast the hair out of the way.

It fell impudently back.

“Could you move your skirts just a little, so I could have a look?”

Rowena straightened, glaring. “Hells not, you arse.”

He blinked, then blanched, putting his hands up to fend her off. “Oh, no. I meant—I meant have a look at your ankle. My mother’s a doctor. I know a little about caring for injuries.”

“Oh. Oh, in that case, yeah. I mean, yes. Here.”

Rowena gingerly adjusted her skirts. She hadn’t worn a very high heel, partly because she hadn’t the least notion if she could keep her feet in them, and partly because Master Meteron might be forced to look her directly in the eye if she had tried.

The boy’s hands paused over the buckle of her ankle boot. He offered a hand to her instead, smiling.

“I should have introduced myself. I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “Julian Ardai, if it please you.”

Rowena smiled. It was unkind, perhaps, but she couldn’t resist.

“I can’t imagine what your name has to do with my pleasure,” she answered, with an air of mystery she hoped did justice to the Old Bear’s first private words to her. A little thrill followed at the boy’s uneasy expression.

She took his hand, feeling a little guilty. But only a little.

“I’m joking. Rowena Downshire. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Master Ardai. Or . . . is it Doctor Ardai?”

“No.” He laughed, shaking his head. “Or not yet, in any case.”

Julian Ardai removed Rowena’s foot from her shoe as carefully as if he were setting a bone. He turned her foot this way and that, watching her face and the joint at intervals, stopping whenever Rowena twitched in pain.

“It’s only a sprain, though a right nasty one,” he concluded. He was about to put the shoe back on when Rowena spoke again.

“Wait. Since you’re down there already—could you just, um . . . ? Could you do the other?”

“You turned that one, too?”

“No, it’s just I en’t ever—” She bit down on her words and tried again, a little more slowly. “I haven’t ever worn shoes like these before, and I swear my feet want to fall clean off.”

Julian freed her foot from her other boot and set it beside its mate under the bench. He turned that ankle, too, rubbing his thumbs into the soles of her feet. Rowena stared at his hands, puzzled.

“You really don’t have to—”

Julian froze. “I’m sorry. I thought if they were hurting you, I might—”

“Oh, they are. They’re murder.” Rowena shrugged. “I just didn’t want to bother you . . . You’re not bothered?”

“Not particularly.”

“So you’re in the habit of giving strange ladies foot-rubs at fancy dress parties?”

Julian shrugged one shoulder and dug deep into her arches. “Every habit starts somewhere. You’re not part of the usual crowd.”

“That obvious?”

“It’s not a bad thing.”

Rowena sniffed. “So you say. This place seems all about the usual crowd.”

“It is. Places like this always are.” Julian finished his work on her feet and rose, gesturing to the space beside her on the bench. “May I?”

Rowena shuffled left, making room. She tried threading her hair back into her pearled combs, hoping she could piece her coiffeur together without a mirror. Julian sat beside her, watching the operation with unconcealed interest.

“Is staring usual for the usual crowd?” she asked tartly.

Julian looked away. “I’m sorry. I’m making you uncomfortable. I just could swear I’ve met someone like you before.”

Peddling lucifers out behind a public house maybe, yeah, Rowena thought bitterly. She gave up on her hair and hoped Julian wasn’t mistaking the heat on her cheeks for her turning all swoony.

“So what brings you here, Rowena?”

There was a speech she’d been drilled on, and Rowena launched into it, folding her gloved hands primly on her lap. “My uncle. My mother’s been pestering him for months to take me out for my debut—he goes to a lot of these functions, you see—and he finally decided now was as good a time as any.” Julian studied her. Flustered, she wheeled off something spontaneous, spinning the thread to stitch up loose ends. “He was nattering away with some heiress or other—he’s a bachelor, my uncle, and tends to gather up some notice. I decided I would rather look for something more interesting for a while.”

Rowena smiled, as if it were a form of punctuation. There. It was even more than halfway true. She wondered, remembering Anselm’s caution in the past, if she’d blinked twice or not.

“Your uncle,” repeated Julian.

“My uncle. That’s right.”

“I should probably take you back to him. He’ll be wondering where you’ve gone.”

“No. I mean—he won’t be.”

Without quite knowing why, Rowena felt absolutely certain the last thing she wanted at that moment was to be returned to her wondering not-uncle.

“I don’t get out much,” she explained, too hastily. But it was honest, at least. Was it possible she could carry on the whole conversation without telling a pack of lies? If she rationed herself a steady stream of half-truths, would that leave her only half as much a fraud? The idea blossomed in her, warm and thrilling. “I live with my . . . my parents. My father tends to keep a close watch of me. He’s a good man, and he means well by me, but it can get a little . . .”

“Stifling,” Julian completed. He spoke the word with conviction, as if he knew it well—carried it and pulled it out for regular consideration, like a well-wound chronometer.

“A bit.”

“I know exactly what you mean. My mother’s work puts her much in demand. She’s training me in it. Mostly the mechanical side of things.”

“I work in my father’s business, too,” Rowena said. “An alchemist’s shop.”

As soon as the words came out, the bloom of truth withered and went cold.

Rowena’s mouth snapped shut. However credible her story was, if she was the niece of a man whose sister had married down to be an alchemist’s wife—worse, a shopkeeping alchemist’s wife—then she wasn’t much of anything to be on debut. A quarter-hour earlier, that wouldn’t’ve bothered Rowena Downshire one spit. But a quarter-hour earlier, she hadn’t yet tumbled into the arms of some doctor’s son and settled into a lovely little garden to have him rub her feet. She wasn’t fool enough to draw up designs beyond that. She just didn’t want him to look on her the way she knew she deserved to be.

“Bugger.” Rowena knotted her hands into fists.

Julian put a hand over hers. Rowena glanced at him warily.

“It’s all right.” His voice was low and earnest. “Everyone knows my mother’s not really a doctor. Not the sort with a title from the EC.”

Rowena blinked. “What sort, then?”

He shrugged—one shoulder, only half a dismissal. “A special sort. Complicated jobs. Reconstructions. Greatduke Armando Elanti had three serious bouts of dropsy in less than two years. Mother gave him a replacement heart last spring. He’s at the party tonight—his first gala since the operation—but you wouldn’t know he’d been so far gone just a year ago.”

“She made him a heart?”

“Well, she ordered the design and installed the pump when it was done. I did the building. That’s my job—biomechanicals. The EC haven’t a formal program of study for it, so it’s all retired army surgeons and lay-physicks and engineers driving the field. That’s where Mother got her start, back in the Coal Wars over in Vraska. We’re tradesfolk, too.”

Now, Rowena knew she was staring again.

“Holy Proof. You’re that Ardai? Your mum’s Jane Ardai. Resurrection Jane.”

“Is . . . that a problem?”

“No! I mean, it’s grand,” Rowena insisted. “I should have recognized the name straight away. I’ve heard stories about Resurrection Jane for ages. They say she can do anything.” She straightened, tilting her head as a thought ran like a marble down from one side of her mind to the other. “Actually, a lot of that is you, isn’t it?”

“Mother can build the replacements herself, but the work goes faster if she can focus more on the medical part. I started learning how to read her schematics and use the materials when I was ten or eleven. That was forever ago.”

Rowena wrinkled her nose. “‘Forever’ nothing. How old are you, fifteen?”

Julian bristled. Something about the twist to his lip made Rowena laugh. That only made his scowl deepen.

“Sixteen,” he answered.

“Oh, well, that’s completely different!”

“It is to me!”

Rowena smiled apologetically. “I’m fourteen.” The news seemed to surprise him. “And a half,” she added. “My birthday was back in Twomonth. I’m very mature.”

Julian studied her for a long moment. Rowena looked back, doing her best to screw her own face down into a mask of absolute conviction.

They both cracked together, laughing until they were out of breath.

“And a half?” Julian gasped. “That’s a sure sign of maturity. Counting halves.”

Rowena nodded, sputtering between giggles. “That’s right. And I’ll bet you don’t even shave.”

“I do! Here, see?”

He grabbed Rowena’s hand and pulled it to his cheek, pressing her fingers close.

They both froze. Silence closed around them like a curtain.

Rowena stared into Julian’s face, blinking back the tears laughter left in her eyes. His hand went slack and was about to fall away from hers, his eyes wide with shock at what he’d done.

Suddenly, without knowing why, losing hold of Julian’s hand seemed like the worst possible ending for Rowena’s evening. Her fingers tightened around his. They sat, staring at one another. She wondered if she had ever breathed so loudly before.

You should go find Anselm. Or the Old Bear.

As soon as the thought came to Rowena, she knew she wouldn’t follow through on it. She wanted to sit here all night—to be near Julian and his youth and his earnest, lovely face. She’d had enough of old wounds and gray hairs and scolding father-fondness. They could wait their turn. They would keep.

She wanted something else entirely.

Somewhere in the garden, a bullfrog burbled. The fireflies had come out—or they had flown in from the great glass doors cast open on all sides of the courtyard.

“I’m sorry,” Julian murmured. His fingers moved under Rowena’s, as if they might slip free. “I shouldn’t have just grabbed—”

“I can’t really feel it,” she blurted.

He blinked. “I’m sorry?”

She pulled his hand down, still twined in hers, and unlaced their fingers. “My glove. You wanted to prove it, but I can’t . . . my glove.”

Julian pulled at the glove’s lace, teasing it off, one finger at a time. The right glove came off, slithering down Rowena’s skirts and pooling on the ground between her cast-off shoes.

Rowena put her bare hand to Julian’s face. She traced his cheekbone with a thumb, trailing her fingers along the line of his jaw. A soft rasping answered her touch. The pale, fine stubble whispered against her skin.

“Your razor en’t very sharp,” Rowena murmured. She pulled her hand back.

Julian’s face followed it, drawing nearer. She watched his warm honey eyes close, the lashes so fine and clear she might have counted them.

Julian had teased off her other glove, leaving her hands bare. Rowena closed her eyes and felt his presence, the warmth of his approach, one hand drifting to pull her to him, and then—

For a long moment, nothing happened. Rowena opened her eyes and found Julian at a more proper distance, his hands back in his own lap, cheeks flushed.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “That was—I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have presumed.”

Rowena smiled, hoping to conceal her disappointment. “It’s all right. Honest.”

Julian looked round with his whole head and shoulders, sweeping the courtyard for any sign of the kiss-that-wasn’t having been noticed. Only the bullfrog and the drifting fireflies attended them, a thin rattle of crickets chirruping from the long fronds of palms and tiers of begonias.

“We should find your uncle,” he said, sounding sullen. “He’ll be looking for you soon.”

“But what about you?”

Julian blinked. “What about me?”

“It’s just,” Rowena continued, “I don’t know . . . Will I see you again?”

He smiled.

“Tell me where you live, Rowena Downshire,” he vowed. “And I promise you’ll see me again.”

“By the Highstreet quay in Westgate Bridge. The Stone Scales.”

Julian gaped. Rowena went cold, frozen by her foolishness.

“The Alchemist is your father?” he asked. There was none of the usual provincial wariness in his voice—none of the tremble she’d come to expect after any mention of her position. Julian Ardai had most definitely reacted to that address, but reacted how, Rowena couldn’t say.

A familiar voice cut the air. “The Alchemist isn’t her kin, boy. I am.”

Anselm Meteron stood at the foot of the stairs they’d descended earlier, his expression flat and inscrutable.

To Rowena’s great surprise, Julian rose and walked in his oddly hitched way toward Master Meteron, laughing, his right hand outstretched.

“Uncle Anselm!” he cried. “Blessed Reason, you scared me near to death!”

Rowena watched, dumbfounded, as Master Meteron shook the boy’s hand. It had been some kind of a put-on, the cold look and hard voice. He slapped Julian on the shoulder with the rough familiarity of an old friend.

“How are you, Julian? Been taking care of your mother?”

The boy smiled. “As much as she lets me, sir. She said to expect you’d be here, but I thought you must have turned the invitation down.”

Master Meteron quirked an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“There was still wine enough to go around.”

“Arse.” Meteron gave Julian another slap on the back and strolled down the path toward Rowena, his smile so sharp it could’ve skinned a cat.

“I see you’ve already met Rowena.”

Julian blushed. Rowena hoped the heat rising on her cheeks didn’t show half as clearly. She tugged her gloves on, fumbling for dignity, but her trembling hands had other ideas.

She wasn’t afraid of Master Meteron judging her. He could take his sneering suspicions straight to the devil for all she cared. She was trembling from something else—something hot and yearning still tumbling around inside her.

“Yes, sir,” Julian said. “I hadn’t realized she was your relation.”

“And my escort,” Meteron added. “You’ve left me defenseless against the most shameless widows and ambitious spinsters, cricket. I’d have escaped their clutches ages ago if I’d had your comfort to beg off on.”

Rowena righted herself with a few unceremonious tugs at her bodice and skirts. “You wouldn’t have so many hangers-on if you just let someone make an honest man of you.”

“That’s entirely impossible, I assure you. Character is a mitigating factor.” He winked. “I’m sure any one of those ladies would be very happy to apply for the position of Anselm Meteron’s deeply bereaved, unspeakably wealthy widow.”

“You don’t really think they’d marry you just to murder you, Uncle,” Julian scoffed.

“By degrees, as quickly as they could manage,” Meteron said. “They’d make sure the help kept my cups and my plates full, and once I grew old and fat enough, my wicked heart would cave under the weight of its many sins. An eligible bachelorhood may be the only thing keeping me alive.”

Master Meteron took her hand, and Rowena rose, only to wish she hadn’t. Her ankle lit up in a flare of pain. She buckled against his chest.

Meteron’s brow creased. “I’ll have a devil of a time explaining to your mother if you’ve gotten stumbling drunk on the night of your debut.” He leaned into the word, making clear that he meant the sort of mother who was two hands taller and four stone heavier than himself.

“It’s my ankle. I tripped on the stairs and Master Ardai kept me from going down the whole way.”

“Hmm. Well done, boy.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Well. As it happens, we’ve our audience with the Greatduke and his wife to enjoin, and we’re already late, given the time I spent looking for you. Best be along, cricket.”

“I know where the receiving room is,” Julian volunteered. “Mother was there earlier this evening. Here—it’s faster if you go up the east corridor.”

They started that way, Rowena using Master Meteron as a prop as unobtrusively as she could manage. Putting her shoes back on seemed like more trouble than it could be worth—at least until they were about to enter into the peerage’s audience directly—and so she carried them in her left hand, swinging them a little, as she might a market basket. As they went, Rowena looked between the Masters Meteron and Ardai, trying to parse the relationship. Julian wasn’t any more Anselm Meteron’s nephew than she was his niece. Of that, she was sure. She wondered what unspoken understanding had earned him that particular identity. Surely the missing finger of his right hand was proof he hadn’t called on Resurrection Jane’s personal services. She wasn’t the type to leave a job half-done, if the stories about her bore any truth. As they walked, Julian nattered away, trying to impress Master Meteron with his recent work, talking about something called a polymer and how he’d figured out how to use it to substitute for cartilage. Rowena felt the familiar weight of facts sifting through her brain, working into the crevices like a bit of sand nagging an oyster, forming the pearl of an idea.

It might be . . .

She frowned, thinking, and pursed her lips. Julian was taller than Master Meteron, with a face made more for unguarded truths than the high gloss of social theater, but his jaw tapered much the same way. If only he could summon an ironic moment, Julian’s smile could well be the sharpened edge of a dagger, too.

The boy conducted them to a pair of gilt mahogany doors. There he shook Meteron’s hand again, then turned to Rowena, smiling warmly.

“It was a great pleasure meeting you.” Julian took her hand and bowed, kissing the tips of her gloved fingers.

He looked up at her through the untidy fringe of his hair, the shadows from the gas chandeliers above falling just so. A fist clenched in Rowena’s heart.

“Thank you,” she replied.

They watched Julian disappear down the wide, shining corridor, weaving back toward the murmur of the party and the tinkling of glasses lifted in toasts.

“Uncle Anselm,” Rowena said.

She stared a challenge at Meteron. His cold gaze pinned back her ears.

“His mother and I were friends once.” His voice was too level to be anything but a threat.

“Nice of you to keep in touch.”

“If I were you, I’d hold my tongue when it comes to matters I know nothing about.” He examined her minutely, and most unkindly. “Unless I arrived later than I believed, and you’ve already learned a few things for yourself?”

Rowena coiled to snap back, but Master Meteron opened the parlor door. Her curse at him changed into one for herself. He hadn’t given her a moment to put on her shoes again. Too late now. The people within the chamber turned at once to look their way.

Ears burning, Rowena took Anselm’s arm, trying to hide her dangling footwear behind their backs. Her clenched teeth made for a very toothy smile.