34

I FOUND THEODOR AS SOON AS HIS BREAKFAST MEETING WAS OVER, pulling him onto a small terrace and away from Admiral Merhaven, who watched with badly disguised contempt.

“Some witness gave them ammunition against you.” Theodor sighed as I told him what I’d heard the ladies gossiping about and seen in the mandolin lesson. “You did read work on curses, though?”

“Of course! Pellians didn’t write about anything else. What was I supposed to do? You suggested…”

“I know! I know I suggested we look into it, but now it seems a wretched mess that we can’t begin to understand, let alone do anything about. You’re quite sure the music lesson you saw was casting?”

“I’m positive. They’re training these musicians here. What we’ve seen so far is still bad, of course, but this… it’s an entire program of influence by casting.”

He ran a hand through his hair, mussing his carefully pomaded queue. “The sooner we leave here, the better. No one watching your every move, believing you’re the only one here who can expose them.”

“I need to clear my head,” I said.

“Not alone,” he replied. “If they’ve started spreading rumors about you—I don’t trust them.” I acquiesced, less than convinced that his presence or the flimsy ceremonial sword he wore would do much good against the attacks on my reputation.

We wandered, quiet, through the garden as the sun’s rays brightened the shell path to a warm gold and tied the shadows of the trees together.

I pulled us away from the center of the garden as tears spiked behind my eyes. I tried to force them down, but the anger that spurred them remained, and their heat spilled over my cheeks. Our allies were manipulating us with casting, Galitha was on the verge of civil war if it hadn’t erupted already, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. The future I had sacrificed my shop for could dissolve into smoke and ruin. I could almost capture again the feeling the music lesson’s casting had pulled from me, a deep-seated and gentle happiness. It was my own emotion, drawn forth by the casting, and I recognized it—the optimism of accepting Theodor’s proposal, the confidence of the reform passing. A fragrant flower in full bloom that I hadn’t realized was one strong breath of air from dropping all its petals and becoming nothing more than a stalk stripped bare by harsh reality.

I hiccupped back a sob and then stopped, turning my attention to voices on the other side of the hedge. Theodor laid a hand on my arm, knowing I wanted the sliver of dignity that privacy could afford. I recalled where I was—right by the Queen’s Beech tree and the space in the hedges secreted away by tangled rose vines. We slipped inside the sweetly scented chamber, and I sat on a bench to compose myself as the conversation continued outside.

“Let me see you—I can hardly believe you’re really here!” The female voice was muted, but nothing could erase the excitement in even its whisper. And faintly familiar, despite being muffled. “I could devour you, you know that?”

I flushed and wiped my eyes—if I had expected to overhear something in the garden, I had anticipated political intrigue. Instead, it seemed I had blundered into a lovers’ reunion.

“It wouldn’t do at all to be seen here.” Another female voice. And it was familiar, too—but I couldn’t quite be sure, nor could I believe it.

“I know, I know. The villa is arranged—but who did you bribe to get you in here?” It was, I realized with a start: Annette and Viola. I grabbed Theodor’s hand, and one look at his face told me he already knew.

We stepped out from the hidden room, and I hadn’t decided whether to speak to them or try to pull Theodor away when a bright clatter of stones erupted behind me and both figures jumped to attention.

My skirt trailed a clump of weeds whose tendrils had straggled through the rocks beside the path. I raised a hand in weak greeting.

“Sophie?” Viola swept forward. She was dressed in an outdated and plainly cut dark blue traveling suit, impractical in the heat but not betraying her identity, either. I jerked the weeds from my skirt hem and hurried toward them. “And Theodor. I admit I hoped to see you both at some point, but not quite yet.”

“What are you doing here?” I hissed. Whatever their reason, it was clearly clandestine. Otherwise, Theodor and I would have known to expect Viola’s arrival, and certainly they wouldn’t be stealing about the gardens like a pair of besotted thieves. Annette hadn’t breathed a word of this when we had spoken mere hours earlier, spoken what I now recognized were words of farewell.

Viola grimaced at my tone, but Annette squared her shoulders. “Running away,” she said. “We’re hounded no matter what we do in Galitha.”

“We were going to tell everyone, you and Theodor included,” Viola added. “As soon as we figured everything out. But things have changed so much in the past few weeks.” She unbuttoned the top of her traveling jacket and loosened the kerchief wrapped around her neck. “No scolding, not now, Theo,” Viola said. “There isn’t the time and you won’t change anything anyway.”

“Then start explaining,” Theodor said. “So help me if this gets out.” He didn’t need to say it—there was enough scandal surrounding the Galatine delegation without a lovers’ elopement added like so much grist to the mill.

“Yes, Annette and I had planned, since she was invited on the delegation, to make use of the trip. It’s not running away, precisely,” Viola pleaded. “Yes, I know how selfish that would be. But we wanted a place we could retreat to. Out of Galitha.”

“Out of Galitha.” Theodor maintained an impressively placid face.

“Plenty of people do it! Have homes in the Allied States or here.”

“For diplomatic or trade purposes, typically. With, typically, the blessing of the Crown.”

Viola matched his iron stare. “Typically, perhaps. But not always. And sometimes for far more questionable practices than having somewhere to live unmolested by constant rumor and political machinations. Ever since those sketches were stolen, it’s been one ugly cartoon or satire or falsified gossip rag after another. We wanted to get away from that, from all the infernal gossip and cruel marriage schemes, so Annette found us a villa while she was here.”

“Is that where you were when you begged off for headaches?” I demanded.

“I’m sorry, Sophie, I did feel badly leaving you to fend off the old buzzards and their gossip on your own.”

Viola continued. “We planned to spend the better part of the year here—regardless, that part isn’t important.”

“It’s not?” Theodor shook his head. “You running off on your family, your obligations—Vivi, what would your father say?”

“After the past fortnight, he’d tell me to go!” Viola bit her lip, fighting to keep her voice low. “In fact, he did tell me to go. Galitha is collapsing on itself. It won’t be safe for nobles or commoners much longer.”

Theodor nodded. “So I’m to understand. Lucky you arrived when you did,” he added caustically, “given that we’re returning.”

“If you insist,” Viola said, eyebrow raised. “You might consider staying here. Lord Pommerly, in Havensport, even called up the army against his own people.” She exhaled. “I barely got out of Galitha City. There are those among the common people who have taken to violence against the nobles and those common folk they see as colluding with the anti-reformists. Shops attacked, effigies burned. Most of the nobility who hadn’t already headed for their estates have done so now, but…” Her shaky breath made her petal-pink lips tremble. “I know that several didn’t make it, and there are more unaccounted for.”

“How do you know they didn’t make it?”

She returned his stare with misery flooding her deep brown eyes. “I recognized some of them, strung up from the ramparts of the wall just outside the city.”

Nausea hit my stomach like a hammer, and I had to sit. It was happening again, but worse, much worse, than Midwinter. “What now?”

“But to go back—Theo, there’s no telling what might meet you at the docks in Galitha City. What if the rebels have taken the port?”

“They’re not rebels, Viola—the damned nobles who refuse to obey the law are.” Theodor heaved a sigh. “I have to go back. There’s no other way to clean this up than to rally those nobles who will uphold the law to unite with the reformists among the common people.”

“You’re determined to go back, then,” Viola said.

“Was there some question about that?” Theodor barked. “Of course.”

“It’s only—if anyone isn’t willing to return, perhaps we could organize a bit of an expatriates’ community here. Just for the time being,” Annette added in a rush. “I’m not keen to cause any more problems by returning.”

“I’m not going to condone your stunt here by encouraging others to join you,” Theodor said.

“I thought, Theo, of all people, you would understand,” Viola said softly. She glanced at me, and hesitated before adding, “I know you justified your betrothal as beneficial to the political situation, but it very well may be that it pushed some of the nobles over the edge.”

Theodor huffed, then glanced at me before answering. I deciphered the ingredients of that look in an instant—remorse, hope, conviction. “I never ran away from my duties.”

“Your duties didn’t involve having a marriage thrown at you,” Annette snapped. “Or being dragged along on a diplomatic envoy for the sole purpose of being paraded about like a horse before a race.”

“Please,” Viola said. “What’s done is done. Theodor, you have no more power to force Annette and me to go back to Galitha than we do to keep you here. And there are things far greater than where we’re living to worry about, in any case.”

“I should say so,” I said. My voice, silent for much of the conversation, had the effect of a tolling bell ending a service at the cathedral.

“We should leave,” Annette said quietly. She pressed a paper into my hands. “We were going to send this to you after we’d left, but since we had the good luck to happen into you, take it now.”

Names I didn’t know tripped in Annette’s neat handwriting across the page. “The location of our villa,” Viola said. “Province, town, name of the property.”

I embraced them both, wishing them well in the same hushed whispers our conversation had been conducted in, hollowly unconvinced this trick of theirs would work yet fervently hoping it would. Theodor wavered but eventually kissed each of them on their cheeks.

“And if things ever degenerate to the point that you can’t go home,” Viola added, “you’ll know where you can find us.”