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The rest of the week passed uneventfully, as if it was allowing me time to recover from Karl’s visit. After he left, I did not think much of anything again, allowing myself to fall into a daily routine of working instead of waiting. Ben was still avoiding me, Amir was never around, and Harshad was his usual quiet self. Lady Penelope was moody and distant, and I did not know whether I preferred her that way or not.
Days later, I was lying on my bed, staring up at the ceiling, when I finally decided I had waited long enough.
Previously, after working with Ben and Harshad, I would retire to my room, throw myself onto my pillows, and allow rest to come. My body screamed for relief, and sleep was usually kind enough to answer it at the end of each day.
Until now.
There was a sadness inside of me, one I both recognized and did not recognize. I could have blamed Karl for my troubles, but I decided more responsibility belonged to Lady POW. She had interrupted my session with Harshad earlier, barging into the room only to announce Karl’s formal invitation had arrived.
“Karl Marcelin has sent a personal invitation for you,” Lady Penelope told me. “He requests your attendance at a concert at the Stavovské divadlo tomorrow night.”
“Why is it such big news?” I asked, using her arrival as an excuse to catch my breath—for all the good it did. As if he knew, Harshad motioned for me to finish the various fighting sequences before giving Lady Penelope my full attention. “He said he was going to send out an invitation.”
“That was two days ago.” She emphasized the words carefully and slowly, as if I was struggling to learn a new language or understand basic arithmetic.
When I frowned and kept punching the bag in front of me, she only sighed.
“You still don’t know much about Society, do you?” Lady POW shook her head. “If his interest in you wanes, we will have a harder time finding information. There is also the matter of your reputation.”
I stopped moving as Harshad gave me a nod of approval. I was finished with his assigned work. “I don’t care about that.”
“You might want to. The Stavovské divadlo, the Estates Theatre, is hosting a special concert to celebrate the new year. If Karl shows up with you, especially for your triumphant return to Society, he will be showing the people that Prague can return from disaster. He will be seen as an inspiration, and he can use that to transform into a leader.”
“I think you are giving him too much credit. I can’t imagine why that would be inspiring.” I wiped the dripping sweat off my forehead with the leather of my stealth habit’s small skirt. “But it will be nice to get out of the manor.”
Even if I have to join Karl for the evening.
“I will send out your acceptance and get Marguerite to prepare your dress at once,” Lady Penelope said, already skipping out the door.
Once she was gone, Ben snorted. “She sure can be frustrating at times.”
“I know.” I gave Ben a smile, but he ignored me and went back to working on another round of fighting sequences. I looked over at Harshad.
He wore his usual unreadable face, the stoic expression more enigmatic than ever as he turned away from me, looking toward the window. Harshad was content to ignore Lady Penelope, and at the time, I wished I could, too.
Hours had passed since then, but my sadness only increased. I glanced over at the drawer where Ferdy’s combs and my parents’ heirlooms were tucked away.
I missed him.
I missed all of them.
My life was very different from the previous year. Last Christmas, Ben and I had been ordered to help Cecilia prepare for an extravagant dinner for several of our rich neighbors. I was certain that, while she believed Alex’s marriage arrangements were settled, she was hoping to find someone for Prissy to marry, too.
At the last moment, a large winter storm had come over the area, and no one was able to come. Rather than allow the staff to celebrate the holidays, we were ordered to throw out the food and stay in our rooms.
But despite Cecilia’s anger, Betsy and Mavis, my closest friends, had made little gifts for me and Ben. We celebrated together in the barn. It was freezing but huddled around the fire, we were content. Ben and I took turns reading from the books I had pilfered from the library, and Betsy, at Ben’s prodding, brought us food she had saved from being thrown out.
This year, Betsy and Mavis were gone, Ben was ignoring me, and I spent my free time working with Harshad and pretending to read. I barely noticed the cold winter days as snow began to fall and accumulate.
I am alone.
I wondered, briefly, what Ferdy would think of me if he saw me at that moment. At the thought of his gloating, or more likely the thought of his sympathy, I sat up.
There was no reason I had to lie here and wait for things to happen, I decided. It was time to go and make things right, starting with Ben.
Squaring my shoulders, I made my way out of my room and headed toward Ben’s. My brother had ignored me for long enough. I had apologized and given him some time alone, and he was still begrudgingly diffident.
Thankfully, we had a mission, just as Amir and Lady POW did, and if he would not reconcile with me in one area of our lives, he would still work with me on another. I could certainly force him using that leverage.
Still, I said a silent, desperate prayer as I knocked on his door.
“I’m coming!” he called enthusiastically.
I was about to tell him it was me when he opened the door. His excitement faded at once. “What are you doing here?”
“Who did you expect?” I pushed past him, walking into the room.
Before I could press for an answer, Ben groaned.
“Why are you here?”
I gave him my best smile. “I have a favor to ask of you, brácha.”
“My answer is no.”
“I didn’t even tell you what I wanted,” I objected.
“I know you, Nora. I’m not helping you go see Ferdy.” He crossed his arms. He narrowed his eyes at me; his black eye, still slightly puffy, made his acerbic expression more comical than aggravating. “I’m a cripple, not your caretaker.”
“You’re both,” I snapped back before I remembered I was here to make amends. I did not appreciate his attitude, but we were not going to be able to get along if I reciprocated.
“I’m sorry.” I took a deep breath. “I came here to say I’m sorry, about everything. I was upset the other week, and you were right. I still ... I still don’t want to think about Ferdy.”
“Then why do you want to go see him?” Ben asked.
“I’m not here to go see him. I wanted to go to the Cabal. I thought if we can go see Clavan and Eliezer, we might be able to find a lead on where Cecilia and everyone else is.”
“I’ve already been there a few times. I didn’t learn anything. Why don’t you go with Amir, since you’re his favorite now?”
“His favorite?” I paused for a moment, and then I shook my head. “That’s not true, and Amir is friends with both of us. Even if it was true, that has nothing to do with this.”
“So you say.” Ben rolled his eyes. “Either way, I’m not going with you.”
“It’s been a few weeks,” I pressed. “Surely there’s something new for us to find. Come on, please? I’m tired of just training. You’ve been able to see our friends there and I haven’t, and we do need to find out what we can. Even if we don’t find anything, we can at least say we tried.”
There was a long minute of silence before Ben softened and sighed, ever so slightly. “Harshad will be upset if we are tired in the morning.”
“Maybe Clavan can give us some tea to take home.” I smiled brightly. “I know you want to find Betsy and Mavis as much as I do. I’m worried, especially since they disappeared with Alex. There is no telling what happened to them with him around.”
“That is true. I haven’t thought about what might have happened to Alex.” He shook his head. “I’ll go with you, but you have to follow my lead. If we do run into Ferdy while we’re out, I don’t want you causing trouble.”
“Me?” I laughed. “You were the one who looked like you wanted to kill him the other day.”
“He hurt you.”
Ben’s voice was conflicted, and I paused. All of my life, my brother had been the one to protect me. Even though I knew he was angry at me, I knew he would have felt responsible for my pain—even if it had nothing to do with him and everything to do with a roguish prince.
“That doesn’t matter now,” I said quietly. “Betsy and Mavis, Tulia, and the others all need our help. And as for Ferdy ... I don’t think we will have to worry about him at the Cabal.”
“Why?” Ben asked.
Amir had warned me Lady POW was pressuring Ben for my secrets, but it would have been amusing to tell him that Ferdy was Karl’s younger brother, playing the part of the good prince with his family for the holidays, instead of running around Prague dressed like a pauper. I could picture Ben’s reaction—the initial shock, the eventual anger, and then the list of questions I would not be able to answer.
The thought of those questions, and the certainty of my complete humiliation, prevented me from saying anything.
Instead, I turned toward a window. “It’s cold outside. He’s probably not going to be walking out in the winter this late at night.”
Ben’s gaze followed mine, where the ground was still sprinkled with a small layer of white powder. “You have a point, but you could just as easily be wrong. What if we do run into him?”
If Ferdy did dare to show his face to me, knowing my heart was tender and my mission was dangerous, I would likely kill him out of frustration. I might have wanted him, but I still wanted him to be safe more.
I did not tell Ben what I was thinking. Instead, I shrugged. “Thanks to all of Harshad’s training, I can take care of him.”
When Ben laughed, even though it was a small one, I knew I had won.
“I don’t want to tell Lady POW about this,” I added, as Ben reached for his shoes.
“You might as well tell her,” Ben said. “She finds things out anyway. Remember how she caught us coming back from the Cabal last time?”
“I know, but she’s got secrets of her own. I should be entitled to a few myself.” I reached out and took his hand. “And, for now, Ferdy is one of them. I don’t want her to know about him.”
“What happened with him, exactly?” Ben asked. “I know you saw him at the castle.”
“He knows about the Order,” I said. That was the truth.
“And?”
“And he did not want anything to do with me after that.”
That was a lie. My mind taunted me with the memory of Ferdy’s embrace, the beautiful horror of our fiery passion, a self-sentenced penance far worse than any I could have been given.
Once we made it to the stables, I watched as Ben made a few adjustments on his brace. “Is that new?”
“Yes.” Ben did not look at me. “After it broke the other day, I decided to try out a few ideas to help with our new activities. See? I added some padding at the joints to help with the clacking sound, and it fits inside my boot better.”
“Can you ride using it?”
“I can, but since we’re going to go into the city tonight, we should walk.”
“Walk? It’s going to take more than an hour to do that,” I groaned.
“Lady POW is more likely to notice we are gone if there’s a horse missing,” Ben said. “And Dox is getting old. Let him rest.”
“He’s not that old. Táta bought him the summer before Máma died,” I remembered. “He called him ‘Dox,’ for doxology since it was a miracle he had gotten such a good price on a horse in his prime.”
“That was fifteen years ago. See? He is old.”
I said nothing in reply. Although Ben was right, even though I was attempting to get along with him, I did not want to give him more accolades than he needed.
“Otec did always have a strange way with names,” Ben added, almost as if he sensed my reluctant concession. “‘Benedict’ was short for ‘benediction.’”
“It seems to be appropriate, on both accounts.”
Ben brushed off my teasing. “Well, I suppose it’s a miracle now that Dox has managed to survive this long.”
“We survived, too,” I reminded Ben gently. If I had been younger, I might have reached over and hugged him in comfort. As it was, I was still tempted to reach for him.
Instead, I buried myself into my cloak, already blistering against the chill as we made our way toward the heart of Prague.
The city was not far from our home. Riding in the carriage or up on Dox, I could cross the Vltava within thirty minutes, and that usually included a stop at Tulia’s cottage. We passed by her former home, and I could still see a few of the remaining walls. The fire had devoured the small house weeks before, and now the snow covered a good portion of the scorched wood.
In the background, Prague’s city skyline glowed with lamplight from within and moonlight from without. From where we were, I could not see the broken, collapsed castle walls, nor could I hear the city’s chatter.
As I studied the castle walls, I saw a few rooms lit up with light, and I wondered if Ferdy was there. Karl was staying there, too, I recalled, and I chuckled at the thought of them forced to dine together. I knew it was wrong to laugh at another’s misery, but if I could find no joy in my own despair, laughing at someone else’s did not seem so unnatural.
“What is it?” Ben asked. “What is so amusing?”
“Oh ... I was thinking of Karl,” I said, scrambling to think of something else. “He said he was staying at the castle. I thought ... I was thinking it would be amusing if we just kidnapped him.”
“We could do that.” Ben’s tone was serious as he considered my jest. “You know him, so we would be able to get close enough. If he is there without Lord Maximillian, he would not be able to call for help. And we could likely get around the guards. King Ferdinand already knows about the Order.”
“I do know that Empress Maria Anna trusts me, at least enough she did not tell Karl about me,” I added. Philip had told me that before, and Lady Penelope confirmed it. “You know, she trusted Máma, too, during the Revolution.”
“Did she?”
“Máma was the one who protected her, along with Táta.” I glanced back at the castle, thinking of Karl. “She was pregnant at the time.”
“Well, I was born just after the Revolution,” Ben said.
“I meant the Empress, not Máma.”
“Well, she was pregnant, because I was born just before 1849.” Ben shrugged. “I guess they were both pregnant at the same time.”
It was strange to think that. I had never thought about it before, but Ben was right. My mother and the former empress had both been pregnant at the same time.
Maybe that was the real reason they were able to trust each other, I thought. There had to be something to motherhood that bound women together, the same way that my life was connected to Karl and Ferdy, in that I could understand the uniqueness of a sibling’s love, or the lack thereof.
“Ben?” My voice dropped to a whisper, as though I knew it was treachery to even think such a thing. “Do you think we made the right decision to join the Order?”
“Of course.” Ben’s answer was immediate and certain, and I could not stop myself from envying him. He had all of his doubts answered at the beginning.
“Why do you ask that?” Ben pressed, stepping closer to me as we crossed the Vltava, heading over the river toward the Jewish Quarter where the Cabal was located. “Don’t you like it?”
“Well, I’ve failed at it,” I said. “And ... what about Táta? He was poisoned with the Order’s secret weapon. Who could have done that, other than a member of the Order?”
“There are always traitors on every side.”
His answer did not give me comfort. It sounded too much like a scripted answer, something he had overheard and decided to believe until a better theory or certain proof came along.
“I’ve been thinking ... maybe we should find out what happened when Máma was here before,” I said. “I know Lady POW does not want to talk about it, but she says she knows that our father’s murder and the current political coup are related.”
Ben sighed, his steps slowing down as we came up to the entrance of the Cabal. “I don’t know, Nora. If Lady POW does not want to reach out to the League, she likely has a good reason.”
“Amir and Harshad are both part of the League, as is Lady Penelope herself,” I pointed out.
“She would know firsthand how treacherous some of the members are, then.”
“Stop making excuses for her. We should learn about that ourselves. And besides, if Lady POW is keeping secrets, she might be lying to us as well.”
“She’s been a good leader so far. What could she be lying about?”
“Plenty. She’s a woman who puts business before family, remember?” I bit my lip, not sure what else I could say. Ben’s antipathy made me worry that I could not trust him with my doubts, and as much as I knew it was true, I hated to think that I was right to keep Ferdy’s secrets from him, too.
“Maybe we can learn some things about the past when we get back,” Ben said, clearly conflicted. I saw him avoid my gaze as I looked over at him. “But first, we are here to look for Betsy and Mavis.”
I sighed. He was right about that. We could worry about multiple things at one time, but we could only do one thing at a time, too.
“I feel so useless sometimes, Ben,” I confessed. “There is so much evil in the world, so many questions that will always be unanswered. And there are so many other people who don’t seem to care.”
He gave me a scrutinizing look. “Do you want to quit the Order?”
I bristled, feeling like he had missed my point. “Máma did.”
And she kept her own mother from learning about us, too—maybe to protect us.
Philip said before that Ferdy had been kept a secret from the Order and the others who protected the king during the Revolution. Was it possible that in joining the Order, while I was able to learn more about my mother and who she truly was, I was actually working against her wishes?
“Nora.” Ben tugged on my cloak. “We can’t leave the Order now. There are people we need to save.”
Even if I did not feel good about it, I knew Ben was right. I could almost hear Harshad’s voice inside my head, telling me to focus. We were here to find information on Betsy and Mavis, and the rest of our former household.
I did not have time for doubts.
But.
There would likely always be people to save, countries to help, maybe even rulers to protect. “I don’t know if we will ever be able to leave,” I whispered. “Do you think we can?”
“Why would you want to?” Ben said. When I only shrugged, he sighed. “Leaving is one thing that Lady POW never did specify. She has been doing this for decades now.”
We fell into silence, as the Cabal came into sight.
It was time to see if we could find some answers to my many questions. I straightened my shoulders, determined to remain hopeful.