In the morning, after a near sleepless night, I woke up to Madame Linea’s screams. They echoed through the halls, loud enough to wake everyone under the Couterie’s roof. I could hear the patter of slippers and doors opening up and down the hallways.
I raced upstairs to Linea’s room, where the other Couterie were gathering. Couterie and Shadows alike exchanged confused, sleepy looks. I played along. Linea had to have discovered that Lavendra had run. I could not let her know that I already knew. Linea never emerged from her quarters before brunch, but here she was screaming at the crack of dawn. Everyone was there—everyone except Lavendra.
One of the Shadows, Sypress, knocked on the open door after patting down the wisps of blond hair that had escaped her braid.
“Madame?” she said as loudly as she dared.
Madame Linea paced away from us. She was still in her night silks, and she was holding a letter. Even from a distance, I knew it must be from Lavendra.
“She’s gone,” Madame Linea said, pacing the room and dropping the letter to the floor.
I managed to contain a smile and ask, “Who? What are you talking about, Madame?”
“Lavendra . . . Rather than live the life of a Shadow, she snuck away in the night. No one has ever left the Couterie.”
Madame Linea pulled her robe closer around her, seeming to come to her senses and realize she had an audience. “Everyone, what are you standing there for? Lavendra is gone, but we must go on,” she ordered. “Go, except for Farrow.”
There was a murmur of disbelief as the crowd shuffled off to breakfast.
I had changed Lavendra’s, Madame Linea’s, and possibly even Tork’s life course when I changed my own. Hecate had once said that one change made so many ripples. She was right.
When everyone was gone, Madame Linea turned her focus to me. I couldn’t remember ever being alone with her in her room before now.
“Farrow, what would make her act so foolishly? What will become of her?”
“I don’t know, Madame . . . You have taught her well. She is resourceful.”
But if Madame Linea was hearing me, it did not register on her face. She wrung her hands in frustration. I had never seen her to be anything other than calm.
“We don’t need her anymore,” I said. “I won the Challenge. I will be Couterie.”
She suddenly leaned toward me. “Have you ever been to the circus?” she asked, picking up a brush from her dressing table as she spoke. “My favorites were always the trapeze artists. I was obsessed. I spent whatever allowance I had to go see them . . .
“There was one artist, Ophelia the Grace, who wore the most beautiful costumes, and she walked the high wire like she was crossing the room. She was so effortless. I thought she was magical. I thought she might even have been Entente.”
I took a shallow breath at the mention of the Entente. There was no way for her to know about me, but that did not stop my skin from prickling in alarm.
“But it turned out she was not. I was sitting in the back row of the theater when she fell from the wire and clear through the net . . .”
“Did she . . . ?” I asked.
“Deader than Lavendra will be if I ever set eyes on her again,” she said. She dropped the brush to the floor, and it landed with a thud. I instinctually wanted to reach for it and pick it up, but Linea’s face told me not to.
“That’s awful, Madame Linea. The net failed?” I asked, horrified.
“No, the net did its job,” she countered.
“I don’t understand. You said the trapeze artist got hurt. The net obviously failed.”
“There is no net strong enough to catch someone from that height. The net was a placebo. It gave the artist the illusion of safety. It allowed her to step out onto the wire. But it was never meant to actually catch anything. Or save anyone.”
It took me a second, but I realized what she was trying to say. “So, we . . . the Shadows are a net?”
She nodded. “Having a Shadow a step behind you keeps you on your toes. If you know that someone is waiting to take your place, you are that much more careful to keep it. More than that. You give the Couterie the illusion of choice.”
“And you get free labor and free competition. We were never meant to take anyone’s place,” I said.
It was clever and cruel. But it was effective. Madame Linea didn’t nod this time. She was done being coy with me. There was no point now.
“I know Lavendra better than anyone. I have studied her almost every minute I’ve been here. I can be her. Challenge or no challenge, I can be Couterie,” I said.
Madame Linea outstretched a hand, a slow smile crossing her face. “You surprise me, Farrow. You are Couterie, after all.”
I took her hand and shook it.