49

WE REACHED THE ESTATE VIOLA AND ANNETTE HAD BOUGHT just before nightfall, the thick scents of flowers seeping into the street like a fog. “White gardens,” Kristos said, nodding toward the walled grounds of the estate. “Common here. The night-blooming flowers are almost all white and smell like a puddle of mixed perfumes.” I wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or not.

Theodor presented himself to the Serafan maid who answered the door, and she blanched as if she were a night-blooming flower herself and ran for her mistress.

“Our reputation precedes us,” I joked weakly. The others didn’t laugh. Any complacence we had begun to indulge in on the road, moving farther from Isildi and from the danger at the inn, faded now.

Viola hurried to the door after her maid. “When I said you should come to see me, I hadn’t meant quite this soon,” she said, embracing Theodor and glancing past me at my strange traveling companions. “Come inside.”

Theodor and I followed Viola into the open hall of her new home. The doors were open to courtyards and gardens outside, and faintly cool breezes moved through the house. Alba moved after us with the possessed confidence of a highborn woman, but Kristos and Sianh hung back, moving gingerly as though afraid their boots would mar the mosaic floors.

“I’m sorry to intrude on you,” I said, and explained the reasons for my unexpected flight from Isildi as quickly as possible. “But where is Annette?”

“An acquaintance called and asked if she could help with a bit of Galatine translation in a business matter.” Viola watched Kristos and Sianh, both of whom were acting as though they had forgotten what to do with one’s arms. Alba stood poised as a statue. “You did collect quite the entourage. The one with the beard is your brother? The great incendiary writer of the Midwinter Revolt?”

I nodded. “One and the same.”

“I rather want to slap him and sit him down with a bottle of port for a long talk, all at the same time.”

“He has that effect,” I answered. “The Serafan is Sianh and the Kvys nun is Sastra-set Alba.”

“Indeed,” Viola replied with a twitch of a smile. “We’ll arrange your passage tomorrow. Port Triumph is an hour’s ride, at most, but the captains are deep in their cups by now.” She hesitated. “That is—if you still want to return. You’re welcome with me.”

“I know,” I said. Viola began to say more but stopped herself. Instead she called to the maid and arranged sleeping accommodations for all of us, in her swift and subtle way. She was at home here, speaking in low voices to maids in Serafan and wearing a loose Serafan housedress, pale lavender cotton enveloping her the way a cloud cushions a setting sun. I wondered if Viola had the rare gift of seeming at home anywhere, in a Galatine ballroom or a Serafan garden. Would she seem as comfortable in a Kvys convent, I wondered? In a cold and hard-bitten Fenian countinghouse?

Alba slid close to me and took my hand. “Your friend is a thorough hostess,” she said, nodding toward a tray of lime tonics that had appeared. “And she is trustworthy.” I began to answer before realizing that it wasn’t, for once, a question. Alba had ascertained this for herself.

“Can I ask,” I said, hesitating, “how is it that you can ride so well?”

Sastra-set Alba laughed. “We are not born nuns, Sophie Balstrade.” She stepped lightly away to inspect several paintings hung along the hall—Viola’s work, I knew.

The door swung wide and Annette hurried inside. I held back from greeting her; worry consumed her face and she was not nearly as surprised to see us as I had anticipated. Behind her, mirroring her worry, was the last person I had expected to see near Port Triumph.

“You were supposed to be halfway to Galitha on the Gyrfalcon by now,” Theodor said, striding forward to embrace his brother.

“Merhaven left without me.” Ballantine nodded in greeting to me and Viola, politely letting his gaze skim over Sianh and Kristos.

“That seafaring rat.” Viola caught Annette’s hand. “And the lovely Lady Merhaven, too, I imagine.”

“Both rats,” Theodor said with a wry laugh.

“I won’t disagree,” Ballantine said. “I waited at the docks for you and Sophie, but Merhaven came instead. He sent me ashore for provisions and sailed without me. Quite deliberately, of course.”

“It was an entire plot, to prevent my return to Galitha,” Theodor said. “And you were too close to me to be trusted.”

Ballantine held up a hand. “I know, you needn’t rehash the whole thing. I think they’d prefer you out of the game entirely. The anti-reformists have begun calling themselves Royalists. Because they’ve got Father on their side, you see, and that makes them ever so official. It tarnishes their maker’s mark if the royal house is, in fact, divided.”

“Royalists? That’s rich,” Kristos snorted. “What ought we to call those in favor of the rightful, lawful governance?”

“I believe the common folk out of Havensport and Hazelwhite and the other places have that covered, as well; they’ve adopted the name ‘Reformists’ from the bill, and it’s taken off—more palatable to the moderate common folk than the old Red Cap designation.”

“I imagine,” Alba said quietly to Theodor, “that even with your father siding with the Royalists, many among them fear your influence on the common people.”

Theodor glanced at Alba blankly, then shook his head. “There is a Kvys nun lecturing me on the power dynamics of my own nation.”

“Yes,” I said, “there is. But Sastra-set Alba has been insightful thus far. And she’s been a great help in rescuing me from underbelly assassins.”

“The a’Mavha aren’t underbelly assassins,” Kristos interjected. “Only the finest quality assassins for offing foreign dignitaries.”

“It seems I’ve missed some good stories. At any rate,” Ballantine said, “we’re going to need a new ship.”

“This is all quite too much to arrange on a poor night’s sleep and an empty stomach,” Alba said gently. “As it is too late to do anything about arranging passage for anyone, perhaps we ought to retire for the night and hold our own summit tomorrow?”

“I think that’s the best thing for everyone,” Viola said hastily. “No use making any drastic decisions on no sleep.” She swiftly ushered everyone to their rooms, still sparsely furnished as she and Annette had only so recently acquired the house. Yet each piece of furniture and each framed painting was carefully selected and positioned to show it to its best advantage. I sighed. I hadn’t wanted to drag trouble onto Annette and Viola’s doorstep before they had even had a chance to enjoy their life together.

Theodor was asleep before he even took his breeches off, his stockings and boots in a messy pile on the floor, but I couldn’t fall asleep. Despite an aching weariness that settled deep in my bones and eyes as dry as the dust in Isildi, my thoughts fought sleep like a drowning man, flailing in a current of exhaustion and refusing to be swept away. When I did fall into fitful rest, I woke with a start, time and again. I finally rose and padded down the hallways of the grand house, feet hot on cool tile, until I found the door to the white garden.

I wasn’t alone in my insomnia. Sianh sat cross-legged beneath a sprawling double-blooming magnolia, his arms above his head as though reaching for some invisible fruit caught in a high branch. The creamy white blossoms brushed his dark hair when the wind moved, and I caught their thick scent mingling with the sweet hair oil Sianh used. His eyes were closed.

I turned to leave, but he must have heard the faint rustle my bare feet made on the path. “Sophie. If you can’t sleep, come sit.”

“I don’t want to disturb you,” I said. “Or keep you up.”

“I already slept. It’s nearly morning.” He unkinked his long legs. “And what I’m doing—passing time, nothing more.”

“Meditation?” I ventured.

He laughed, a faint snort of derision. “That makes me sound mystical, divine. Is that what you think of Serafans, that we’re some sort of mystics?” He shook his head. “I have a knot in my shoulder the size of a spiny apple. I was only stretching.”

I flushed. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I know.” He pulled an arm across his chest and winced. “I should not have made fun. You, I am sure, know full well the frustration of bearing the assumptions of others.”

“Then let’s leave assumptions aside. I still can’t quite understand why you would come with us, why you would take on a charge that doesn’t concern you.” If it wasn’t my country, I would have stayed as far from the bloody turmoil in Galitha as possible.

“Did you forget how much you agreed to pay me?”

“No, and it seems a low amount to risk your life for.”

“What in life isn’t a risk? It was only a matter of time until a jealous wife or angry brother came after me in my current position.” He shrugged. “Or until I aged ungracefully out of my ability to serve in the Warren. It is time for me to turn to another way to earn my bread. But what I cannot quite understand is why you are not inclined to believe someone when he tells the truth.”

I started. “The truth sounds too simple the way you tell it.”

He shook his head. “I think it is because you saw ideals corrupted and now you don’t recognize the truth.”

I clenched my teeth, biting back a retort. He didn’t have a right to speak to me as though he knew me, as though he understood what the Midwinter Revolt had done to me. He didn’t have a right to understand, I amended, acknowledging that he had hit on the truth. My brother’s ideals, corrupted into regicide and murder of innocents, my ideals, abandoned to craft curses. Even Pyord, I admitted, corrupt idealism personified. What could I trust? I struggled to answer.

“My brother would have let me die,” I finally said. “For ideals. Ideals are not such noble things as you would believe.”

“You ought to forgive him.”

Now the anger flared into bitter laughter. “Forgive him? Didn’t you hear me—he would have let me die. Plenty of people did die, but he would have let me die. His sister. He cared more about his ideals and his vision than about me,” I said, my voice rising thin and harsh.

Sianh nodded. And waited.

“I’ve never said that before,” I whispered. “He cared more about his revolution than he did about me. He chose it over me.” He loved it more than me, I added silently, the impact of those words too great to say aloud.

“And for that, you must forgive him if you are to go forward. He is remorseful—why do you think he circles me for a fight, like a rangy hound? He has never behaved thus before. He wants to be the one to protect you, to save you. To make up for the past.”

“So you say.” I took a shaky breath. “And where do I go from here?”

Sianh smiled. “Back where you began, but entirely different, no?”

I blinked slowly, tension seeping from me. The sun was rimming the horizon, pale orange. Sianh had been right—while I had seen only night, it had been nearly morning. “True enough. I’m not sure what place a charm caster has in this.” The thought struck me. “Sianh, does the Serafan army use… music?” I asked awkwardly.

“Drums and pipes on the field, yes. Not dissimilar to your own army’s drums, for relaying orders.” His eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“I’m not sure you want to know,” I replied.

“I think you’re telling me that I must know.”

I hesitated, but there was no avoiding letting him in on the Serafan court’s great, deadly secret, not if I wanted to have any way of countering it if it came to that. “The Serafan court uses charm and curse casting, executed through music. At least, only music as far as I know.” Too much I didn’t know, yet I had to press forward. “It influences the listener. They were using it to sway opinion on issues at the summit, but it could be used…” I shook my head, overwhelmed with possibilities.

Sianh considered this carefully, impassively, and finally nodded. “I can see how that could be effected.”

“Was it?” I asked. “That you saw?”

“It’s difficult to be certain,” he replied. “No—I will tell you what I experienced. And you tell me if that is casting.” He closed his eyes, centering a memory. “We were facing the Bhani; they had built several small redoubts and were defending them fiercely. The pipes retreated a short distance and played a song I’d never heard before—a march, but with a snake of a melody, twisting and fast. I felt—I am no coward, understand, but I felt invincible.” He opened his eyes. “My horse didn’t care for it. We took the nearest redoubts far more quickly than I could have anticipated, and—this was strange—the pipes played the entire time.”

“And you felt different while they played?”

“Bright, fast, brave—yes. I thought I was simply fighting exceptionally well,” he apologized with a wry grin.

“I’ve no doubt you were”—I smiled—“but it certainly sounds as though there was casting. A charm, for all those things you felt and needed to be. And, damn it all, but clever—so that they can use the charm without even the soldiers knowing, let alone the enemy.”

“I suppose you have your answers. The knot in my shoulder is better,” Sianh excused himself, “but I fear I’ve new ones in my head, now.” He stood, sinewy muscle unfolding and engaging. A warrior’s stance even as he walked through the garden. He was joining us out of a sort of ambition borne out of who he was, who he had fashioned himself to be.

And what was I? I was a charm caster. I was a seamstress. I had been born with the ability to cast and with nimble fingers, and I had fashioned them into what I was. Sianh could serve his ideals with a sword or a rifle. He saw redemption and a new life in doing so. I had put myself in service to corrupted ideals once. Could I redeem myself by serving something I believed in? If I could, what use was a charm-casting seamstress to the war raging in Galitha?