19

I couldn’t focus the next day, either at meals or in Fritz’s workshop, where he’d invited me to visit again. Perrault looked worried when he approached me after breakfast, asking if the food or sleeping in the freinnen’s room disagreed with me.

“Seneschal-elect, you must tell me if you require this visit curtailed,” he’d said carefully. His dark eyes were tentative, and the worry and kindness in them almost made me cry.

I had reassured him that of course I didn’t need to leave, that everything was fine.

Everything was not fine. My mind kept drifting, my memory running over snatches of songs I’d heard the night before, wondering if Margarethe had recognized me standing with Lang. And if she had—could she report us to her father, or the tsarytsya? I turned the idea over and over, wondering if she could get us in trouble without getting in trouble herself, until I was nearly crawling out of my skin.

I almost wondered if returning to the ball would be wise.

And over and over again, I heard Lang taunting me. You aren’t the only one who can make friends.

I felt jealous, and the jealousy made me feel guilty. I twisted Torden’s ring on my finger, turning the stones facedown, as though they could see the emotions tangled in my expression.

It wasn’t fair. I hadn’t left Torden of my own accord; we’d been forced apart. And I hadn’t fired the shot that had started this race between Lang and me.

During meals, I watched him and Margarethe out of the corner of my eye. I had hoped that Lang was perhaps only humoring her attention; but that clearly wasn’t true. Margarethe was beautiful, but with Lang, she was also frank and funny. Even at a distance, I could see Lang found her intriguing.

I hated it. I tried not to think of the marvelous time they’d probably had at the ball after I’d left. When I’d leaned across the breakfast table, laughing flirtatiously and trying to appear interested in my conversation with Fritz, he had merely looked baffled. Lang hadn’t noticed, anyway.

He was winning.

“—Seneschal-elect?”

I blinked up at Fritz’s voice. He sat before the pieces of his dryer, hands on the knees of his trousers, frowning.

“Yes?” I asked.

“You seem rather trapped in reverie,” he said stiffly. “You were humming.”

“Was I?” I stalled. Fritz nodded, bemused.

I had been, I realized. One of the songs from the party. The one I’d danced to with Lang.

I wet my lips. “Forgive me. The tsarytsya’s rules about music are still not quite intuitive.”

Fritz raised his eyebrows, working the end of a hose around the chimney of the lantern. “Indeed.”

“I’m sorry if I pushed you too far last night at dinner,” I blurted out suddenly. “I’m out of place here and didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable asking too many questions.”

Fritz leaned back again, propping his ankle on his knee, brow furrowed. “I accept your apology, but that’s not all that’s happening,” he said. “You want something. You pretend not to see things, but you see them. I want to know what you’re searching for.”

Fritz studied me, and, taken aback, I studied him in return.

Twenty-seven wasn’t old. But taking Fritz in where he sat now, I could see the full twenty-seven years he’d lived. Subtle lines had begun to insinuate their way across his pale brow, and his light brown hair was shot with early gray.

Fritz was tired. And Fritz was wise—wiser than Torden, and more perceptive by far than Bear.

Most important, perhaps, he was not enamored with me. He would not be so easily deceived.

I laced my fingers together, nodding at the lamp sitting before him. “Is that working yet?”

He brightened. “It did, a little. I tested it in my suite earlier. The carpet seems much drier than before. The plaster, too.”

“That’s wonderful!”

Fritz nodded, raising an eyebrow. “It is. But you’re also avoiding my question.”

I ran my mental calculations as quickly as I could.

Fritz liked me well enough, but he did not trust me. Not when it came to his sources, and not, I suspected, when it came to his sisters.

But if I confided in him, perhaps he might do the same with me. I lifted my chin.

“I want a favor,” I said.

“A radio.” Fritz’s voice was even, but his eyes were incredulous. “You want to borrow a radio.” I nodded. He laughed as he blew out a breath, shaking his head. “What makes you think the tsarytsya permits us to keep such things? What makes you think I have one?”

There had to be a tower nearby. Hansel and Gretel must have used it to communicate. I’d told Fritz about the radio I’d had to leave aboard ship, hoping the expression of trust would inspire the same in him.

I waved a hand around the studio. “You’re an inventor,” I said, putting all my feeling into the word. “I know this isn’t romantic, between us. But I’ve come to think of you as a friend, and I need help.”

“A friend,” Fritz repeated.

I nodded. “And I’m counting on you not to tell anyone the truth about this.” Ordinarily I would have fought the tremor in my voice. I didn’t hide it now. I bit my lip, letting all my fears and feelings show.

Perrault would have been delighted to see the show I was putting on. To see how well I’d learned from his expertise. Until, of course, he learned why.

“Why?” Fritz asked, squinting up at me from his chair. “Why would you tell me this?”

Because I want you to tell me your secrets, too, I wanted to say. I want you to trust me, so I can help the people I came here to help, and get out. But that wouldn’t do.

So I told a different truth.

“Because my radio is how I’ve been speaking to my godmother,” I said. “She and my father are the only real family I have; my mother is deceased. But my godmother and I have been using the radio to speak since I left, and it gives me comfort. But Lang said it was too dangerous to bring ashore.” I looked up at Fritz, letting my heart show in my eyes. “My family matters more to me than anything.”

Fritz paused. He passed a hand over his forehead, sitting back. “My grandfather was the first hertsoh of Shvartsval’d. Did you know? The tsarytsya appointed him herself after she deposed the ruling family.” He swallowed, gaze growing troubled. “Sometimes I can’t believe what this place has become. What my family has done to this place in barely two generations, when we shouldn’t have been—” Fritz broke off, discontented. “I don’t know what will be left for the future.” He nodded unhappily at the wall opposite us, its plaster crumbling, its wallpaper peeling away.

“That’s what all this is about for you, isn’t it?” I asked suddenly. “You aren’t just an inventor. This is about your family.”

“Yes,” Fritz said quietly. “The future of Shvartsval’d, and my family. What’s left of us.”

“Left of you?” I asked, drawing back a little. “Did you have more sisters?” I winced as soon as I heard my own words. “I’m sorry, that was insensitive.”

But Fritz laughed. “No, no more sisters.”

“Leirauh’s the last of you, isn’t she?” I asked. “That’s why your father babies her.”

Fritz sobered and shook his head. “Leirauh is seventeen. Hannelore and Ingrid are younger. Both fourteen. And besides,” he continued, “Leirauh isn’t technically my sister.”

My gaze snapped up to his. “She’s not?”

“No. My—” His eyes softened, a little sad. “My sisters’ and my mother was an actress. She was famous—one of the most sought after in Europe. When I was little, she worked a good deal in Italy.” Fritz paused. “She used to write to us about the theaters there, about the brilliant machines that brought the stages to life.”

“I’m sure you miss her,” I said. “I miss mine, too.”

Fritz gave me a pinched smile. In this, we understood each other.

“The tsarytsya was lenient for a time, permitting travel outside the Imperiya for certain elite. But she eventually demanded all expatriates return home. When my mother returned, she brought Leirauh home with her. Her mother, another actress, had died en route. My mother died only a few years later.”

“I see,” I said quietly.

She looked so different from the rest of them—I’d said as much to Cobie. Leirauh, with her thick black hair and anxious blue eyes, soft-hipped and pink-cheeked. When I pictured her in my mind’s eye, beside Margarethe and Hannelore and Ursula and the rest of them, all honey-brown hair and high cheekbones, I knew Fritz was telling the truth.

Leirauh’s circumstances reminded me of Anya. She had lost her country and her family and had been adopted into a new home. And she had been charged a high price for her good fortune.

Despite my frustration with Anya, all at once I missed her terribly.

Fritz rubbed at the lines in his forehead. “I worry for them. My father’s treatment of my sisters is archaic. It does not bode well for my family, or for the future of our court and terytoriya.”

I feared for my country’s future, as well. But I couldn’t imagine fearing the actions of my own father.

Daddy might have failed me. But he was tired, and sad, and sick, and his only sin had been to trust his wife. Duke Maximilian had fallen far, far short of what he owed his children.

My stomach quaked at the prospect of returning to the ball and facing Margarethe. But Fritz’s tale made me want, more than ever, to find the Waldleute. It made me believe as much as ever that I’d done the right thing to leave Torden behind, to defer returning to my father, in hopes that we could help old Deutschland shake off the Imperiya and its shadow.

Fritz studied me. “I’m sorry if I’ve been cold. Distant. Unkind, at times. I assure you, it’s not any fault of yours. I’m overwhelmed with the foulness spreading through this castle, and the corruption I fear it will spread.”

“I misunderstood you,” I said quietly. “I thought you were cruel, when we first met.”

“No.” Fritz smiled faintly. “Just a bit inept, and entirely preoccupied.”

“And far more comfortable in your laboratory than you are at court.” I paused. “Also, my clothes were wet, and no one was expecting me.”

“It was not an auspicious beginning,” Fritz agreed. We sat in silence for a long while after that. He fiddled idly with a screwdriver.

“So,” I asked. “A radio?”

Fritz hesitated, as if considering, then stood. “A confidence for a confidence, I suppose.”