12

ALICE HAD THE EVERYDAY WORKINGS OF THE SHOP WELL IN HAND, and though I didn’t intend to finalize my departure until closer to the wedding, I found I was less and less needed in the shop. A few administrative tasks remained on my docket before I could leave the shop in Alice’s hands permanently, including finishing the charmed commissions and reconciling all of our accounts. I had struggled with a recalcitrant health charm all morning, and so took on the task of inventorying our stock so that Alice had an accurate accounting. I was in the midst of tabulating fabric bolt yardages when I heard yelling from the front room, where the staff were packing orders. I dropped my notebook like I’d been stung—Alice never raised her voice, yet there was no doubt that the shout was hers.

I hurried toward the front room to see Heda cornered by Alice near the counter and Emmi slinking her back against the far wall. Alice’s round cheeks were red. “I won’t allow this… this smut in here!”

“I didn’t think—it’s a joke,” Heda stammered.

“It’s hardly a joke. It’s… it’s propaganda, and it’s cruel, and it’s—” I stalled in the doorway to the front room as Alice tore something out of Heda’s hands and threw it on the counter. “You should leave.”

“You have no right!”

“I most certainly do as the manager of this atelier. I will consider your continued employment here.”

Heda was out the door before I could intervene.

“Alice, what in the world is going on?”

“Heda brought—she allowed political propaganda of a particular nature—it’s simply disrespectful!”

“From the way you reacted, I thought someone must have been bleeding or she set the cottons on fire.” I glanced at the now-crinkled, paperbound book sitting on the counter. “That’s it?”

I picked it up and felt the warmth drain from my face as I paged through the opening paragraphs.

“I thought you must have seen it already,” Alice said, gently taking it from me before I could read more.

“No, I had not read the novelized version of my personal affairs relayed as the Cuckold Prince and the Nymphomaniacal Witch.” I was shaking. It was mean-spirited and ugly, no doubt, but, as I snatched the book back from Alice’s protesting hands and skimmed further, it was more toxic than that. Political aspirations fueled the fictionalized version of me, bent on avenging a scheming brother and instigating a new revolt. The illustrations depicted a grossly caricatured Pellian woman, with unruly dark hair and brawny shoulders.

A hollow fear grew in the pit of my stomach—could there be some truth, some tiny grain of reality embedded in these pages, that would reveal my well-kept secret? But no—from a grotesque depiction of a blood sacrifice ritual victimizing an alley cat and a bizarre magic-fueled orgy, it was clear the author of the piece knew nothing about real casting. The author did, however, place particular emphasis on the curses as Pellian traditions, and on the leadership of the revolt as Pellian. If anyone believed the trash excuse for a novel, they would understand the Midwinter Revolt and the Reform Bill both as borne out of a cabal of scheming Pellians.

I threw the book on the counter with shaking hands, and it skittered onto the floor.

“If I’d known you hadn’t seen it… I’m sorry.” Alice pursed her lips.

The meaning behind Alice’s statement dawned on me, horrible and clear. “You mean you’ve already seen this? It’s widely circulated?” I recalled the book Lady Sommerset had slipped into her pocket at the croquet party and her cruel clandestine laughter. How many had read it, had digested the wretched propaganda about not only me but the validity of the Reform Bill itself? “How did you come across it?” I asked, my tone sharp.

“I didn’t mean to!” Alice protested.

“I know,” I said, softening my voice.

“They pass them around in the taverns and sell them in front of the coffee shops,” Alice said. She hesitated, and added, “There are others. They all have that you practice magic—they don’t get it right, though. I thought you knew.”

I traced my fingers over my ledger, which lay closed and bound on the counter. Years of charm casting out of this shop, the discretion for the benefit of my clients and the mystique for the benefit of my business, all tainted and tawdry in the light of some badly written propaganda. I had endeavored since opening the shop to practice my art with deft integrity, and it didn’t seem to matter at all in the face of vicious rumors.

“My sister brought another one of them home… it was meant to be about Lady Viola, I think.”

My hands felt cold, even in the warm humidity of the summer air. “What about her?”

“I didn’t read it past the first few pages—it was all dirty sex stuff. That she likes women, that she seduces nobles and maids and even princesses.” Clearly uncomfortable, Alice edged farther into the counter, as though it could swallow her.

Of course—a piece exploiting the rumors that had always circulated about Viola, coupled with new ones about a long-standing affair with Annette. I was sure, if I read the piece, it would insinuate not only improprieties in her private behavior but dereliction of noble duty and languid indolence, as well.

“I’ll dispose of this,” I said, more to myself than Alice. I plucked the book from the floor and glanced at the printer’s mark, recognizing it as one of the more upscale printers in Galitha City. Likely printing, I acknowledged, at the behest of nobles to suggest to the people that the champions of the Reform Bill were immoral, unhinged, and unduly influenced by Pellians. “Now. What about Heda?”

Alice flushed deeper pink. “I’m sorry if I overstepped.”

“Hardly. You’re quite close to being the mistress here, and in any case—it’s not proper to have such trash circulated here. Hopefully she’ll consider such propriety in the future. But—what about Heda?”

“I… I don’t think it would be right to fire her over it,” Alice said carefully. “It was only a first mistake, even if it was a big one. And…” She stopped herself.

“Yes?”

“Well, she hasn’t worked in a fine shop before.” Implicit in her remark was Heda’s background, her upbringing, even her complexion.

“Very few of the girls we hire here have,” I cautioned Alice. “Pellian or not. Get used to training them to be proper employees, not only to be seamstresses.”

Alice nodded, chastised even though I had said nothing to scold her. We continued the day’s work quietly and she set off early, mouth in a taut line, to pay Heda a visit. I locked the shop door behind me an hour later and almost tripped over a boy in a red cap, perched on my doorstep like a sentry.

“Can I help you?” I asked as he scurried to his feet.

“I’m supposed to deliver this,” he said, presenting me with a folded and sealed letter. The paper was cheap; then again, so was the delivery method. Hiring a boy to run errands cost less than a pint of ale.

I fished out a coin to tip him. He held up his hand. “Just doing my service for the cause, ma’am.”

“The cause?” I raised an eyebrow at his earnest face, smudged with the red dust of the street. He was all of ten years old.

“The Red Caps. I knew your brother,” he added, with confidence in the standing this gave him among the juvenile hangers-on of the Red Cap movement.

“I see. Thank you,” I said as I opened the letter. He dashed away.

I didn’t recognize the handwriting, and the letter was unsigned, but it was clearly from Niko. I wouldn’t dare intrude on your wedding planning and stitch counting, except that I’ve heard rumors that you’re so badly disliked by the exalted elite that there’s some talk of making you disappear. Talk only—but talk from the mouths of those in the king’s circle. Don’t ask my sources, I won’t name them.

We aren’t the only ones who can foment violence, his note concluded. He’d included a clipping from the Gentlemen’s Monthly, which catered to nobles and the wealthy untitled, of a dark-haired woman clutching a cap—presumably red, despite the grayscale printing—with an oversize needle woven through it, thread waving in an imagined breeze. She was standing on a gallows.

I folded the note and put it in my pocket, hands shaking. Of course there would be talk—talk of eliminating a loud voice in favor of the reform, a voice with the ear of the prince and his circle. Of eliminating an embarrassing interloper to the royal family. Surely it couldn’t pass beyond talk, not without driving distrust between members of the ruling elite, without breaking the laws that the nobles saw themselves duty bound to uphold?

Surely it was just talk, and Niko had no right to frighten me with it. Still, I shivered as I walked home despite the lingering summer evening sun.