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I had been hoping that the trip into the city would close the rift between me and Ben, but it only made it worse. That night, I did not sleep well at all. Getting up for Harshad’s training sessions the following morning went against every natural instinct I possessed. Dread crept through me as I made my way down to the parlor.
But when I entered the room, Ben was nowhere to be found. I did not know whether I was more grateful or upset, and if I was upset, I did not know if it was more because of Ben or because of myself.
It was almost as though he suspected my thoughts on the matter, I thought bitterly. Especially since Ben was the one who had been so concerned we would upset Harshad with our late-night outing.
“There you are, Eleanora,” Harshad said. True to his usual self, he was sitting at the desk in the corner of the room, working on some notes in a foreign scrawl. “I have been waiting for you.”
I studied him, watching as his aged hands moved his pen swiftly across the stationary, transforming his thoughts into symbols I could not decipher any more clearly. With Ben’s absence, I had a sudden appreciation for Harshad’s consistency. I might have had reservations about him, but I could see why he would stay with someone like Lady POW for so long; he was a man who knew how to dismantle chaos, and it was possible he even looked forward to the job.
Before I could ask Harshad if Ben was out on assignment for Lady POW again, I saw there was a new presence in the parlor.
The figure stood in front of the fireplace, wearing a hooded cloak, much like the ones I had seen Harshad and Amir wear when I first met them. Before I could say anything, Harshad looked up from his desk.
“Eleanora, I am pleased to introduce you to another member of the Order.”
The hood fell away, revealing another foreign face, this one of a warrior maiden. A looped braid of pure black hair settled on her head before it fell away, hanging down her back. Her slanted eyes were dark, closer to black than brown, as she watched me. It was impossible to guess her age; she seemed timeless, too wise and watchful, too still to be a part of our world.
“This is Xiana,” Harshad said. “She is the Order’s leading expert on herbs and medicines, as well as one of our best fighters. She has agreed to come here and assist us with our inquiries.”
“You make it sound as though I had a choice,” Xiana murmured, and I was astounded to see Harshad smile.
“Xiana, this is Miss Eleanora Svobodová, Dezda’s daughter.” Harshad cleared his throat, quickly wiping away any trace of emotion. “She is our newest member.”
Xiana gave me a bow, bending her body forward. She was clearly from the Orient, and I wondered if that was really how they were allowed to address each other. I curtsied in reply. At Xiana’s wry smile, I knew I had amused her with my manners.
“A daughter for Eleanor at last, I see, along with her son,” Xiana murmured. Her voice was so precise, almost as if it were constrained to each perfect syllable. Her gaze never wavered as she smiled. “How wonderful it was that she was able to keep you.”
“I certainly think so,” I replied, mustering up a smile at the mention of my mother and Ben.
I saw a glitter of laughter in her gaze. “It is nice to meet you, Eleanora. I am sure I will enjoy teaching you while I am here.”
“You’re going to be teaching me?” I glanced around the room. “And Ben, too?”
“Benedict has been given a new assignment by Lady Penelope,” Harshad said, and I knew at once it was no coincidence that Ben was not here. After we had returned home, Ben went to see Lady Penelope. I could understand why he would ask her to be free from me, but I hated that he had severed more ties between us.
Xiana cleared her throat delicately. “I understand you need a new sparring partner.”
“Xiana is a fine tutor,” Harshad replied behind me. “She will allow me to help you with some more complicated moves, Eleanora. She will begin to assist us tomorrow since she has only arrived.”
“What about Ben?” I asked. “Will I still have to fight him? What is he supposed to do now?”
“Lady Penelope has reassigned him, and that is all you need to know for now,” Harshad said.
“Why?”
Harshad’s brow furrowed in irritation, but he answered me nonetheless. “Do not forget, we are still looking for Lady Cecilia and the others. Amir has not been able to find any leads in this regard.”
“Amir? Amir Qureshi?” Xiana asked.
Harshad and I both turned to see the startled look appear briefly on her face.
“Yes,” Harshad answered. “Yes, Amir Qureshi. He will be glad to see you again. I am surprised he is not here already.”
The point of her chin jutted out a second later. “I did not realize he was here, too. It has been many years since I have last seen him,” she murmured, her tone shifting toward apologetic.
I remembered Amir’s story from before. So this is Xiana, the woman who helped my mother save him from his family.
Amir had spoken of Xiana highly, especially her expertise with herbs and plants, and I told her so.
She nodded once, firmly. “It is good to hear he remembers me.”
“We will get reacquainted in good time,” Harshad said. “Eleanora is working on the basics of fighting.”
“Not that I’ve mastered them, of course.” It was better that I told her the truth than allow him to, I thought.
“All masters begin the same as the student, and eventually return to their beginnings,” Xiana said, coming up beside me. She pushed back her cloak a little, enough to where I could see she was clad in a close-fitted outfit, one with long black pants and sleeves allowing her to blend into the shadows completely. From what I could see, the fabric reminded me of my own stealth habit, only her set was cut differently.
Her mouth curled into a smile as she caught me staring. “I was never very good at fighting in any skirt, even one as short as yours.”
“I can understand that,” I said. I liked my habit, but I did not think I would ever get used to the thin, short skirt that went down to my knees.
I was just about to ask Xiana more questions when the door opened. Amir slipped inside, clearly arriving from his nightly rounds of collecting and dispersing information in the city. He never faltered as he saw Xiana, but I saw her balance shift ever so slightly.
“Amir.”
“Xiana. It is lovely to see you again.” Amir gave her a quick but respectful nod. I knew him well enough to know there was nothing in his movements to suggest he was being false. He was glad to see her.
Amir gave me a quick smile. “Are you going to be fighting with Xiana today, Eleanora?”
“We will start tomorrow, as I have only just arrived in Prague.” Xiana straightened. “I wonder if she will give me as much of a fight as Naděžda used to?”
I did not pay attention to them too much as they talked; I was too surprised to her Xiana use Amir’s name for my mother. She had allowed Harshad to call my mother “Dezda,” but she herself had called me Eleanor’s daughter. I glanced over at Harshad, remembering what he had taught me about names, and the names people give each other.
At my glance, his mouth hardened into a straight line, one I could not be entirely certain of, but it almost made me smile. Harshad had noticed the change in my mother’s names, too, and it seemed as though I was growing in his esteem.
I was glad for that. It was not just physical battles I was supposed to learn how to navigate.
Harshad cleared his throat a moment later, interrupting Xiana as she mentioned her recent trip to Paris. “Amir, would you show Xiana to her quarters? She just arrived this morning and I imagine she is eager to settle in.”
“Yes, Master.” Xiana gave him another nod and then turned to face me. “It was nice meeting you, Eleanora. I look forward to seeing what you have learned.”
When Amir and Xiana were gone, I glanced over at Harshad. He waited for several long moments before he nodded to me.
“Thank you for your patience, Eleanora,” he said. “Welcome to your first official day of training.”
“What?” My mouth dropped open. “What do you mean? I’ve been in here working nearly every morning since the Advent Ball.”
“You have been learning how to fight, how to protect and prepare yourself,” he conceded. “I did not think you would agree to continue for so long and I applaud you for your efforts.”
“I don’t think I should thank you for that, by the sound of it,” I grumbled.
He did not seem to hear me. After all our time working together, he was likely used to ignoring me. “But what I have taught you so far, any street fighter could have. Now that your brother has been reassigned, it is time for us to officially begin.”
“Why did you teach me to fight at all, if it was not for real?”
“Because Ben has to learn, and he thrives when faced with a competitor. You were our only option, and indeed, the best option.”
“He’s been mad at me ever since we began,” I said. My cheeks burned, and I struggled to hold back my tears. “You destroyed the trust between us, and on purpose!”
“Of course. Life does this, on a regular basis,” Harshad said, his flattened tone somehow much more harrowing than any anger could have been. “You were instructed to find your weaknesses.”
“Which is apparently trusting the wrong people, and failing to trust the ones I should,” I muttered.
“Trust was already a weakness of yours,” Harshad said. “Your parents have both died and you were left with your stepmother to raise you. But she did not do that, did she? She used and abused you and your brother. While Lady Penelope and I are now here, we cannot undo her damage. We can only work you through it, and that is often times more painful.”
“Well, what else is my weakness, then?” I put my hands on my hips and frowned. “If you’re going to be torturing me to teach me, I might as well be prepared for it.”
“You are too stubborn and too easily distracted. You are far more compassionate than you should be. You lie quite a bit, possibly for the wrong reasons. You have trouble with authority, and you are concerned with appearances much more than realities.”
He clasped his hands behind his back. “That is just a preliminary list, Eleanora, and as we work on diminishing those, others will appear. It is the nature of things.”
I did not know what to say. There were plenty of things I would not argue with him, if only he had been a little nicer about presenting my flaws.
Harshad turned his back toward me. “We will also work on your strengths, if that is any comfort to you. You are a stubborn, curious soul, and that is something we can harness as a strength as much as a weakness.”
I wonder what my other strengths are. I tried to think of what else Harshad would say, but recalling that he had just dismissed me as too easily distracted, I tucked the question away for another time. I consoled myself with the knowledge that even if he did tell me my strengths, he would do it in the same backhanded manner Lady POW did.
A new idea popped into my head. Lady Penelope’s teachings had worked against her, and I wanted to know if Harshad’s had that same capability.
“Harshad?” Despite his teaching, and all the time we had spent together in the recent weeks, his name felt strange coming out of my mouth.
Perhaps that was why he did not reprimand me right away.
“What is it?” he asked.
“What is your weakness?”
He was silent for a long moment, and I was sure he was going to refrain from answering. But then he sighed. “Several of your own,” he admitted. “But there are others, too.”
I put my hands on my hips, a sinful sense of satisfaction coursing through me. “It is good to know you’re not perfect.”
“Your mother is one.”
At the mention of my mother and his admission, I froze. I had not been expecting him to admit any specific weaknesses, let alone one that seemed so personal.
“Amir says you are curious about her most of all,” Harshad said. “Is that true?”
It was suddenly very hard for me to swallow. “Yes,” I whispered.
“I thought as much.” Harshad’s eyes lost their hardened quality, and he seemed much older all of a sudden. “If you do well with your sessions, I will tell you more about her.”
I pursed my lips. “Does that mean you’ll tell me something about her today?”
“I have already admitted she was a weakness of mine,” he reminded me. “That is enough for today, is it not?”
“Well, you said she was a weakness, but you didn’t explain how.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “That seems like a fair follow-up question.”
“Fair, but foul as well.”
“Paradoxes are not the same thing as contradictions,” I reminded him.
“It is good to see your wit is quite a weapon.” Harshad nodded. “But it also shows that I was right. When you want something, you are much more focused.”
I blushed, unsure as always if it was a compliment or an insult or even both. Harshad had been merciless in forcing Ben to admit to his hidden resentments and his insecurities, and now I was sure he was going to do the same with me. Harshad was focused, too, and I had to give him credit for it. I saw now that he was willing to do anything to see that I became a better fighter.
He sat down, crossing his legs on the floor. He motioned for me to follow, and I did.
“Why did you join the Order, Eleanora?”
“To help save others,” I answered.
Nothing changed on his face, but his tone softened ever so slightly. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. “There is more to it than that.”
“Well, I wanted to be free from Cecilia,” I admitted. “And I thought ... my mother ...”
My voice trailed off as I thought about my mother. Máma had been a beautiful ghost of sorts, a memory never real enough to satisfy me. I wanted to grow up to be a true lady, as she was, and make her proud; I had no idea how to do that. In meeting Lady Penelope, I had been hoping for some way to capture that ghost, to make the memory more real, to resurrect the dead long enough to find my way in life.
How did someone admit to that? How could I put into words that I was on a strange, illogical quest for my mother, looking for approval and acceptance I feared I would never find in anyone else?
“I met Dezda for the first time when she was very small,” Harshad said, jolting me out of my introspections. I blinked to see he was watching me intently, and I wondered if he was able to make sense of my own confusion. “Your grandmother was still working with Jakub at the time.”
“You knew my grandfather, too?”
“I knew him before I met Pepé,” he said. “She was his mistress when I met him.”
An involuntary blush heated my cheeks and I coughed, choking on air.
Harshad sighed. “You are old enough to not be surprised.”
“According to Society, I’m supposed to be horrified,” I said. “Surprised is much more mild.”
“Society is so strict with youth. And in many ways, I can understand it. So many people suffer needlessly when people are careless. Rules are there for reasons, even if those reasons might seem strange to others. But there are exceptions in every case, and you need to watch for them.”
“I’ve already noticed Lady Penelope makes up her own rules,” I said. “You don’t need to tell me that.”
I was surprised to see the smile on his face. The little lines on either side of his lips tightened together in little batches, wrinkling his face as much as humanizing it.
“Exactly. But that was something she picked up from Jakub, and something that she only enacted when he grew increasingly uncomfortable with her involvement with the Order. She had an aunt who was a member of the Order before her, who ran a brothel in the streets of London. When Pepé’s father died, she was sent there to work, learning how to coerce gentlemen into giving up their secrets.”
I did not say anything, this time too shocked and horrified. The truth seemed too awful for words, even though I was suddenly very glad Lady POW did not teach me the full curriculum on sexual manipulation. I had a feeling it was even larger than I originally feared.
“Dezda, by Lady Penelope’s own words, was a ... miscalculation,” Harshad continued. “But ... But I certainly never saw her as such, and as Her Majesty Queen Victoria took more interest in my work and Pepé became her close acquaintance, I made it my mission to convince Pepé that Dezda was a blessing to us. She was the next generation of our legacy, working for the Crown and helping maintain the order of the world.”
The rest of the story’s outline fell into place as I listened to him. Amir had told me before that he had met my mother in Agra, in India, when he was on business with his father. They were there with Harshad. Lady Penelope and my mother had come along with him in order to escape Jakub and begin a new life.
Lady Penelope had been irrevocably disillusioned with men and relationships, and as proud as she was, she would not allow Harshad to rescue her from her disappointments. My mother might have been repulsed by Amir at first, but when she fell in love with him, she found there was nothing she wanted more.
Well, almost nothing, I recalled. Máma wanted her freedom, and she wanted a family of her own.
“Do you know why I am telling you this, Eleanora?” Harshad’s voice, always so strict and brusque, was almost calming.
I shook my head. “No.”
“I have two reasons for doing so. The first is practical in our lesson. Your mother is the key to your focus. I was hoping she could also lend some help with your balance.”
“I’m not sure how learning about her would help with balance.”
“Balance must be inward as much as outward,” Harshad explained. “There are too many lies and too many secrets that surround us.”
“You could just get Lady POW to admit to her secrets,” I pointed out. “That would help.”
“That is the second reason for my explanation. Secrets are different from lies,” Harshad said. “When we lie, that is when we inflict damage to ourselves and others. Secrets, even the ones we keep from ourselves, sometimes protect us as much as they can hurt us. It is much harder to calculate the risk when it comes to secrets.”
“But they hurt others, too,” I said. “Just look at Lord Maximillian and Karl. And even Tulia, too. She kept me and Ben a secret from Lady Penelope for all these years. We have a duty to find out the truth.”
“Sharing secrets is a sign of trust,” Harshad said. “Your duties for the Order do not need to supersede your relationships; the wisdom you learn should inform your decisions, not dictate them. And that is the slippery part of free will.”
He gave me a knowing look. “You have your own secrets, Eleanora. You know this is true. Secrets offer us freedom from the world, but they can enslave us, too. They let us draw close to some and push us farther away from others.”
I did not say anything, slipping into a thoughtful silence as Harshad gave me another assessing look. “That is why the search for truth must be an ongoing process.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you know what will be even more perfect than our first day in Heaven, Eleanora?”
The question was unusual and seemed to be misplaced, but luckily, Harshad did not wait for my answer.
“Our second day and the third day will be even more perfect.”
“You can’t have something ‘more perfect,’” I said. “Perfect is perfect.”
“I both agree and disagree. This seeming complication does not stop the Americans,” Harshad said. “But it is not poor learning as I would have assumed before. Perfection for us as human creatures is not stagnation; perfection for God is different, of course.”
I thought about what Lady POW had said before, about not trusting anyone, especially the people who would fail her. I realized before that it was an absurd premise, but she was not seeing the same thing I was. She was looking at the paradox as stagnant, and I had known, instinctively, that it was malleable.
“I told you the truth about your grandmother’s past, including some of the secrets she carries,” Harshad said. “But you are still not any more inclined to trust her with your secrets, are you?”
I blushed at his perception and shook my head. “No.”
He nodded. “I thought as much. Trust is a process, especially in a fallen world.”
Perhaps for once, I understood why Harshad wanted me to remain silent while he talked. Everything he said was intentional, designed to tantalize the mind. I was suddenly appalled when I realized how much I had likely missed in our sessions before.
I hoped I would be able to make up for it, after our mission was over.
When he did speak again, it seemed as though ages had passed. “You really are so much like Dezda. I wanted to see for myself how different you are, and that required time.” His voice was much more of a whisper, and I knew he was taking a risk, and letting me know one of his secrets. “I know you are different enough that I can freely admit that I came to regret training Dezda. I did not want to make the same mistake with you.”
“This is not a mistake,” I said, but I felt my resolve weaken. I remembered how Ferdy told me that the Order of the Crystal Daggers was full of assassins, and I had nothing to say in return. He was likely right. I did not know if I was comfortable having the talent to kill someone.
Harshad seemed to agree with my unspoken concerns. “Fighting is contrary to your nature.”
“Being stubborn and contrary is not.” A wry grin appeared on my face, and I was suddenly determined to change the subject. “Besides, Lady Penelope says that Society can only exist when people do things that are unacceptable to save it.”
“That does not mean you must be such a person.”
“I do not agree,” I said. “I am free to see the truth of such a calling, even if it is uncomfortable.”
“This is not what you want.”
I did not know how to respond; Harshad was right. I had my doubts about the Order, about working with people who would, as Lady POW said, would fail me.
But I was at the castle when Karl and Lord Maximillian’s attack commenced. If I had done nothing at all, if I had backed away from Lady Penelope’s offer, if I had jumped at the chance to travel abroad and find a husband, or if I had taken enough of her money to start up Liberté with Ben, I would not have been able to save Ferdy.
And he was worth it. Protecting Ferdy was worth it.
As if to prove myself, I stood up and moved back toward the center of the room and took a fighting stance. “If you’re going to help me win against Xiana, I’m going to need to learn more advanced moves than you’ve been having me and Ben go over.”
Harshad turned around, reverting back to his solemn, unreadable self as we remained content to let the topic drop. “You are correct; Xiana is quite the skilled fighter. That is certainly no secret.”