M ARAH HATED TO ADMIT IT, BUT she’d felt incredibly out of place at the dinner.
It was hard to put into words. Emily had told her to think about her feelings, but she wasn’t sure why. Then again, she had been a stranger to the rest of the crowd, who had clearly known each other for years, and… they’d been used to dinners with royalty in a way Marah couldn’t match. Queen Alassa had been cheerful and friendly and a little too forward, her smile so bright it was hard to recall anything else about her. And the guests – even Emily – had discussed matters of import in a manner that suggested they could actually change things. They were people too, yet they were so far above her…
Resentment twisted in her gut, mingled with envy. The queen’s apartments had been shockingly luxurious, the food plentiful as well as tasty… Marah hadn’t eaten well until Virgil had taken her in, and even he hadn’t bothered to lay out a dinner spread, certainly not for a mere two people. The level of care and attention the queen – and her servants – had lavished on her guests was eye-popping, sheer insanity by Marah’s standards, and it had felt a little seductive. But Marah had been terrifyingly out of place. They had spoken the same language, and yet the meanings were completely different, to the point she might have been happier if they really had spoken a different tongue. It would have been rude, but at least she’d have had an excuse for not understanding.
And they complain about how hard their life is , she thought, sourly. It struck her, suddenly, that the Queen had something in common with Lord Donegal, although it was hard to put it into words. They looked very different, but they shared a certain level of… comfort, as if their bodies were unmarked by life. Marah had been told she was pretty, yet she was painfully aware there were scars on her body, hidden by her dress. They don’t know what real hardship is .
She rolled over as she heard someone come into her bedroom and sat up, one hand grabbing for a fireball. Emily had told Jenny to stay out of Marah’s bedroom, and Jenny had done as she was told… Marah had the spell half-completed before she remembered they were in Zangaria, a long way from the tower. She bit her lip and cancelled the spell before the fireball flickered into life, unsure what would happen if she hurled lethal magic at a young maid. If someone like Prince Jeremy injured or killed a helpless maid, he’d probably get away with it. Marah made a silent bet with herself that the bastard already had.
And would it be better or worse, she asked herself, if I got beheaded for killing a maid… or if I didn’t?
Marah waited for the maid to withdraw, leaving a lit fire behind her, and stumbled out of bed. The clock insisted it was early morning… Marah rolled her eyes and headed for the washroom, relieved that Emily had taught her how to safely heat water. Hot baths were addictive, although – no matter how hard she scrubbed – she could still feel coal dust and grime on her body. The sensation refused to fade. She feared it would be with her for the rest of her life.
She took a long bath, then forced herself to get out of the tub and dress before Emily got impatient. The maid had brought a selection of clothes, all disconcertingly close to the right size, but Marah chose to don a simple pair of trousers and a shirt rather than any of the fancy dresses. It was a way of showing her independence, she told herself, as well as limiting her dependence on the queen. If she wore a dress that looked expensive… she shook her head as she tied back her hair, then stepped into the next room. Emily was already there, eating breakfast. Marah felt oddly relieved to see her. The castle was even more disconcerting than the tower.
“We’ll go for a walk, then teleport home,” Emily said. She put aside a broadsheet and smiled. “Did you sleep well?”
Marah shook her head. She’d always been a light sleeper, except when she’d been staying with Virgil, and that had been a mistake. She had assumed she was safe and… her lips twisted bitterly. Just because he hadn’t tried to take her maidenhead didn’t mean he wasn’t a shithead. He’d considered her expendable, right from the start.
Emily cocked her head. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Marah bit down the first flush of anger. She didn’t know how to talk about it… she wasn’t even sure what it was. How could she explain her feelings when she didn’t understand them? Emily was a noblewoman, by birth as well as behavior, while she… she was a commoner so lowly merchants and shopgirls looked down on her. Emily had been at her ease at the dinner party, chatting with royalty, while Marah had wished she knew how to teleport. Or turn invisible. Or…
“No,” she said, finally. It was hard to say anything openly, not here. There was no way to know who might be listening, or why. “Why… why were you and the queen joking about you not being invited to dinners?”
Emily looked irked, although the emotion didn’t seem to be directed at anyone in particular. “Her father, King Randor, made me a Baroness,” she said. “That made me one of the most important people in the kingdom, which means I have to be invited to all the parties even if no one actually wants me there. Not inviting me is a deadly insult. If I happened to be in the kingdom, even passing through, they have to invite me. Alassa may be the queen, but that makes it even more important that she invites me. If she didn’t, people would think we’d had a major falling out.”
Marah blinked. “What?”
“She knows I hate large gatherings,” Emily said. “And she’s compassionate enough to arrange matters so she has an excuse for not inviting me and I have an excuse for not attending. But if she has to invite me and I have to attend… she’s the queen . I can’t say no so easily.”
“I…” Marah thought, for a moment, Emily was pulling her leg. “Would they think she’d declared war on you, if you weren’t invited?”
“Perhaps,” Emily said. “A royal party – or any sort of gathering – is the social event of the year. Not inviting someone is a deadly insult, even if you don’t want them there. The only way to get around it is to exclude everyone , which means the party will be rather disappointing…”
“I can’t believe it,” Marah said. “Is this what the aristocracy worries about?”
She stared at the breakfast table, laden with more food for a single meal than her family had enjoyed in a week. “There are people out there who are starving, working themselves to death just so they can bring home enough food to keep their kids alive, and the aristocracy is fighting wars over dinner invites?”
“If they are arguing over who gets invited,” Emily pointed out, “they’re not plotting.”
Marah shook her head in disbelief. It was absurd. There was no one in Lubbock, not even the company managers, who’d waste their time with something so silly. They didn’t have the time. The mines had to be worked, the fields had to be tended, the shops had to buy produce to sell and then sell enough of it to make sure the owner had enough money to buy more produce… it was insane. No wonder the kingdom was in such a mess. The people in charge had lost sight, long ago, of what was really important.
“And Lord Donegal thinks you’ll just give him his lands and title back,” Marah said. “Why doesn’t he know better?”
Emily stared at her hands. “If you take a ward into your household, you are effectively taking them as a stepchild, although one who will leave you when they reach their majority,” she explained. “Until then, their property is yours to do with as you see fit and most… tend to organize matters to suit themselves, before their charge is old enough to say no. It isn’t easy to undo whatever the person does, particularly if they enjoy the king’s favor. Quite a few young girls found themselves betrothed to the person who held their wardship, then forced into marriage when they came of age.”
Marah felt sick. “And they get away with it?”
“Not now,” Emily said. “Alassa banned it. But…”
She sighed. “King Randor used Lord Donegal’s betrothal as a bargaining chip. Quite a few noblemen, even foreigners, saw advantage in arranging matches between him and their daughters, but only as long as he held his lands and titles. So he was never explicitly told he’d lost anything, because that would have undermined his use as a bargaining chip…”
Marah scowled. “He should have known better.”
“It’s often hard to think outside the box if you don’t realize the box even exists,” Emily pointed out. “He was the little lord of the castle, then the king’s honored ward. He was constantly told he was the heir, barring accident. It isn’t easy for him to give up on it now.”
“Twit,” Marah said, sourly. It had never crossed her mind she’d inherit anything from her stepfather – or her real father, although she had to admit her family had had very little for anyone to inherit. “Why not just tell him to buzz off?”
Emily gave her a sharp look. “The problem is that social change can happen very slowly or very quickly,” she said. “If it happens slowly, it is often frustratingly slow or incomplete; if it happens quickly, the rules underpinning society are shattered and everything falls apart.”
“That’s what they say about the rebels back home,” Marah said, hotly. “And they’re wrong.”
“Are they?” Emily considered the argument for a long moment. “Pretend I tell Lord Donegal to go to hell, and make it clear his rights to those lands are gone. He’ll accuse me of stealing them and, from his point of view, he’ll be right. What do you think will happen? The rest of the nobility will assume it’s just a matter of time before their lands get stolen too, which means they’ll unite against me. Their very existences will be at stake. They’ll have no choice.”
She paused. “But let’s assume we get away with it. What next? Once we’ve crossed the line, it’ll be easy to cross it again. Perhaps we take a shine to a haberdashery just down the road and steal it too. Why not? We’ve already done it once. So we do, and more people are annoyed at us, and perhaps they revolt and kill us… or we win, destroying property rights in the process, and ensuring the economy collapses into ruin.”
Marah tried not to flinch. “But…”
“Either people have a right to their property, or they don’t,” Emily said, flatly. “If you take property rights away from some people, whatever your reasoning, you’ll create a precedent that will be used to take property rights away from everyone else. And then the economy falls apart.”
“You don’t know it’ll happen,” Marah protested.
Emily smiled. “Do you know what happened in Cockatrice?”
She went on before Marah could answer. “Food production was very low, barely enough to feed the workers. Half the children in the barony were dying of malnutrition. Do you know why? The aristos took almost all the crops, leaving only the bare minimum for the people who worked the land. Why should they produce more, when they knew they were going to lose it? I gave them land and property rights, I ensured they had a right to sell their own produce as they saw fit, and production boomed . They always knew how to do it. They just saw no point in bothering, when they wouldn’t reap the rewards of their hard work.”
“It’s slow,” Marah protested.
“The quick option is often the worst, from a long-term point of view,” Emily agreed. “But it can easily be the most satisfying one.”
Marah said nothing as they finished their breakfast, then made their way out of the castle and down the street. The city felt very different from Valetta, and it was certainly cleaner, although it was still very far from perfect. She saw noblemen rubbing shoulders with merchants and other commoners, the latter often wearing garish outfits that would have been illegal in Valetta. Virgil had told her clothing was yet another way to separate the aristocracy from the commoners and make money for the kingdom through charging up-and-coming merchants huge fees for exemptions from the sumptuary laws. She wondered if Queen Alassa ran the same racket – and it was a racket, no matter how they dressed it up – in her kingdom. It would be incredibly profitable if she did.
“The airship flies from the hangar on the edge of the city,” Emily said. “Do you want to fly?”
Marah nodded, although the concept bothered her. Emily led the way through a maze of streets, past a set of walls that had been swallowed up and then left behind by the ever-expanding city, and then through a set of homes that were clearly lower-class and yet surprisingly neat, compared to the apartment blocks she’d seen in Valetta. A handful of guards strode past, wearing simple uniforms; Marah was surprised to see townspeople wave and nod, rather than giving them the cold shoulder or aiming curse signs at their backs. A lone guardsman wandering the streets of Valetta would be lucky if he got out alive… even before the dissidents had taken to the streets. They normally patrolled in large numbers, if they bothered to patrol at all. Seeing them welcomed by the locals was like seeing the entire world turn upside down.
“They’re welcome here,” Marah said. Emily gave her a questioning look. “The guard, I mean. Why are they welcome here?”
“The City Guard is raised and directed by the Assembly,” Emily explained. “Standards are strict, because most of the cityfolk have the vote and can, and often will, demand punishment for guards who step out of line, or take bribes, or even turn a blind eye to their comrades when they behave badly. There are still some issues, but mostly it works very well. It helps that convicted men are rarely, if ever, allowed to return home.”
Marah felt another wave of envy, mingled with concern. “What happens if a guardsman does step out of line?”
“An investigation,” Emily said. “If they’re found guilty, they are sent into exile.”
She paused as they reached the airfield. An airship floated above them, tethered to a large tower. Marah had known the airships were large, but merely looking at this one felt as if she were looking at something fundamentally wrong. Her eyes hurt as she tried to take in the sheer size of the airbag, let alone the gondola underneath… it was hard, almost impossible, to believe the craft was one of the smaller airships. Great propellers chopped at the air, spinning with a cool deliberateness that bothered her at a primal level. It was surprisingly difficult to convince herself to walk under the airship and scramble up the rope ladder, into the cabin.
“Please take a seat,” the steward said. “We’ll be taking off shortly.”
Marah couldn’t help a thrill of excitement as the gondola wobbled underneath her, shivering so violently she feared the entire airship was about to flip upside down. The other guests seemed torn between delight and terror: the children whooping as the engine noises grew louder and the ground started to fall away, while the older couples, merchants by their outfits, clutched each other in fear. Marah sucked in her breath, taking in the city as it slowly unfolded beneath her. She had known Valetta was smaller than Alexis, but she hadn’t really believed it. Not until now.
She looked at Emily. The older woman seemed a little concerned, almost nervous. Marah wasn’t sure why she was worried. Emily could fly under her own power, couldn’t she? She could save herself, and everyone else, if something went wrong. But she still looked nervous.
The city seemed to grow bigger and smaller at the same time, sprawling out over the landscape even as individual buildings shrank until they looked like children’s doll houses. She ignored the kids trying to point out their own homes and peered down, noting the gulf between rich and poor was still prevalent, even in Zangaria. Giant mansions were positioned next to new apartment blocks, or tiny houses, even slums… she could barely make out any living people on the ground, but somehow she knew the poor would be crammed together. There might be more social mobility here, yet it wasn’t enough. How could it be?
“It’s pretty from high overhead,” she said, quietly. The dirt and grime under her skin itched, reminding her she could no longer see the dirty streets below. Zangaria was cleaner than Valetta, yet Zugzwang put it in the shade. “But you miss the detail.”
Emily said nothing for a long moment, then nodded. “Enjoy the ride,” she said. Marah couldn’t tell what was bothering her. “We’ll head back home afterwards, unless you want to stay longer.”
Marah shook her head. “I want to get back to magic,” she said. She wasn’t sure how long she was still barred from using her magic, although it couldn’t be that long. “Please.”
“Got it.” Emily smiled. “You can get back to magic tomorrow.”