63

THERE WAS NO NEED FOR DECEPTION OR COMPLICATED SCHEMES to leave the city. I simply changed into a simple, loose short gown and petticoat Alice leant me, with a subdued farewell. Leaving the Kvys disguise behind, I set out into the city with Alba and Niko. War made for clear lines drawn between combatant and comrade, between territories carved out on each side. It made for a strange sense of relief amid the chaos; I knew where I stood, the borders between friend and foe neatly demarcated for the first time in recent memory.

“It is not so far from the river to the Kvys border,” Alba said as we made our plan with Niko, “that we cannot walk as the pilgrims do.”

“And be robbed and beaten as pilgrims surely are.” Niko snorted. “No, the river runs north toward the coastline. A small vessel could carry you to a Kvys port. Provided you can pay.”

“That I can promise,” Alba said. “And we will have help waiting for us in Afenstrid. But the Galatine navy?”

“They’ve massed here. They’ve not blockaded the mouth of the river; they can’t without sacrificing too much of their current strength.”

“Patrols?” I asked.

Niko shook his head. “Stretched too thin to patrol the coastline effectively.”

“Perhaps ineffectively—but they must patrol. Then there is some risk in a sea voyage, too.” Alba smiled. “The pilgrim way puts us in no one else’s debt or constraint. What if we cannot trust the man we hire?”

“You’ll be able to,” Niko said. “Between who I know here and your funds, we’ll have a trustworthy boat captain.”

“And then there’s the time it takes,” I said. “A sea voyage, you agree, would be shorter. The sooner we can get ourselves out of Galitha, the sooner we can begin establishing suppliers for the army.”

Niko grinned. “That’s true. And you’ve already noticed, sister, how badly we need the help.” Alba agreed, reticently, and I wondered if she was right to be more cautious of a sea voyage or if her wariness was borne out of yielding control to Niko and the boat captain. Necessity didn’t always make for comfort in these freshly brokered alliances.

Niko himself accompanied us to the riverfront docks. These had been little used when the city was not at war; river vessels dropped their cargo here and carried people toward the eastern river cities and, occasionally, to Kvyset. The boats were smaller, dealing in the currency of muscle as they were rowed up and down the river. An old cob plodded along, drawing ferry boats across the river in a system of pulleys that had remained for decades.

A farmer unloaded sacks of early potatoes and greens from the ferry, part of a tenuous network of suppliers bringing food from the thin northern farmlands. He watched us blandly as Niko spoke in rushed, quiet tones with the owner of a nearby skiff.

“He will want more payment than your friend is willing to part with,” Alba said, watching the exchange.

“I don’t think he’s my friend,” I replied. “But I suppose you’re right. Care to assist?”

Alba folded her hands over her gray habit and inclined her head. She had, despite Niko’s arguments, replaced the veil. She glided toward them and an arrangement was swiftly reached. I envied her the deep pockets of her house and the graceful confidence that ended arguments so quickly.

As promised, the journey from the river to the coastline was short, and the mouth of the river comfortably fed us into a broad harbor. No Galatine ships blocked this route yet; that could come before the war was over. If the main harbor and the river mouth were both blocked, no supplies could reach Galitha City by the sea, and if the Royalists had their plans laid well, they could siege the city from the other side. If Theodor and Kristos didn’t have our troops in the south in fighting order by then, it was likely to be a swift defeat.

Alba spent the short time at sea drafting letters and calculating funds and running all sorts of tabulations that I only half understood. I thought I knew numbers from keeping my shop’s finances, but this was at a greater scale and more intricate tangle of investment and risk and payoff. If the Fenians committed to production, what did we owe to whom, in how many foundries and textile mills and shipyards? Each investment in one area meant trimming a bit from another venture—even the coffers of the Order of the Golden Sphere were not without limit.

While Alba ran scenario after scenario on paper in our shared cabin, I holed up in a corner of the skiff not used overmuch by the pair of sailors keeping the vessel moving. And time and again, I pulled light from the ether around me without the aid of a needle or music. As I practiced over the course of a long summer day, it became clear how crude the conjuring I’d done on the ship from Serafe had been. Unlike my stitched charms, which I could imbue with precise charms for protection, love, money, or health, what I messily pulled and pressed into the sails of the brig had been merely vague good fortune.

Moreover, I needed more control over the light itself, and practiced threading it into ever-more refined spirals and whorls before letting it dissipate. If I didn’t tack it to a physical object, it quickly faded and released itself back to wherever it had come from. Focusing on the actual work of charm casting, and on this uncharted method, took my mind off of the stinging question of whether I ought to be doing it at all.

I couldn’t tell when we crossed the border into Kvys waters, but by sunrise of our second day at sea, we were in sight of Afenstrid.

“It has Fen in the name,” I said as Alba pointed out the still-distant smudge of towers and walls.

“Indeed. As I said, Fenians were originally Kvys colonists. The languages have diverged a bit over time, but a Kvys can still understand a Fenian most of the time, and vice versa.” She turned her impassive gaze on the shoreline. “Fen simply means rock. A particular connotation of hard, unyielding, yet valuable rock.”

“That sounds promising.”

“If rock is against you, there is no turning it. But it’s a worthwhile ally, I would say.” She returned to the cabin and packed her papers until we had reached the docks.

I had expected a quiet fishing village or middling port city, like those we had seen in southern Galitha, but Afenstrid was nothing like those towns with their ramshackle wooden dockside buildings and warehouses. Instead, towers of white limestone and painted turrets bloomed behind the orderly docks, hemmed in by high walls of iron-bordered stone.

A pair of women in gray robes matching Alba’s waited at the end of the docks. Their white veils set them apart from the tradesmen and merchants who also wore gray, black, and deep blue, even in the summer. Kvys were not keen on showy clothing, but they showed their wealth nonetheless. Black was not a cheap dye by any means, and I noticed the fine quality of the merchants’ summer-weight wool suits and the silk satin trim and intricate blackwork embroidery on the exposed shift and shirt collars and cuffs.

Alba greeted them with a kiss and a torrent of Kvys, then quickly introduced me. If their knowing looks were any indication, the introduction was unnecessary. They had a carriage waiting, and the ride to the convent took most of what remained of the long summer day. Exhausted by my extended charm casting on board ship and unable to converse with the sisters, I stared out the window as the city unfolded into a bright meadow and then a brilliantly green forest of narrow birches. I could understand Alba’s reticence to leave this country for Serafe, and as we stopped for lunch in a moss-covered glen bordered by a crystalline brook, I wondered if I might have actually been transported into a fairy tale.

Then I remembered the fire I’d helped to set in Galitha, not so very far away from this idyllic forest, and knew that this was no folk story. If there was any happy ending to be had here, I would have to help write it.

We arrived at the House of the Golden Sphere just as dusk began to deepen the colors of the forest and soften its edges to velvet. I suppose I had expected the convent to look as dour as the sisters’ dress, but its dormitories and libraries and chapels were beautifully built of pale wood, with high arching roofs and tall windows so that light could wash each room. It looked as though it had grown out of the forest itself, and the trees pressed close against its outer walls of pale stone.

“I know you must be tired, but there is something I must show you before you retire,” Alba said.

Our traveling companions bowed slightly and took their leave, disappearing into a nearby dormitory.

“The convent was built hundreds of years ago,” Alba said, “though I know it hardly looks it—we are scrupulous about the upkeep, of course. The oldest building is the basilica, at the center. It was built almost half a millennium ago, to the glory of the Creator. I wish for you to see it.”

Though I was bone tired, the clean calm of the convent leant me some energy. I followed Alba to the center of the convent, where the concentric rings of buildings gave way to an open courtyard surrounding a limestone cathedral. It was smaller than the great cathedral in Galitha City, but no less beautifully built. I stepped toward it, taking in the way the light of the setting sun illuminated the swiftly sloping roofline and the arched tips of the windows.

And then I gasped.

The light wasn’t from the setting sun at all. It bloomed from the structure itself. Golden light shrouded the poplar frame of the doorway. It shone like a pale halo, exuding a calm beneficence. I stepped through the doorway, exquisitely attuned to the shimmering light, caught nearly breathless as it licked my sleeve and plucked at my hair in its gentle undulation. Inside, the beams supporting the ceiling of the chapel were overlaid with the familiar otherworldly brilliance. Even the leaded glass windows thrummed with charm magic, a delicate fuzz of light covering them like a film.

I traced the nearest window, hand faltering as the magic pooled around my fingertip and receded.

“It was the special practice of the sisters here,” Alba said quietly.

I remembered that she was there. In a rush, I remembered that the Kvys hated casting, scorned it, that it was against every understanding I had of Kvys culture to embrace any part of it. I remembered that Alba had known I was a caster—had known this about me longer than I had known Alba—and yet had failed to say anything about this living light. I remembered that I couldn’t truly trust my allies as I would friends. That trust turned shaky the moment we stepped away from our uneasy but equal footing.

“You didn’t see fit to tell me.”

“It has to be seen. To be understood.”

“You could have told me something. Anything. You—you can see this, can’t you?” I asked.

She nodded slowly. “It has taken years for me to even perceive it. My aptitude for the art of the spheres is very low. So much so that, were I not a sister, not devoted to hours of silence and meditation, I would not see it clearly at all.”

I waved my hand, silencing her without words. The hazy golden quiet of the chapel would not be interrupted by my angry voice. “But you can see my work.”

“I saw your work on the ship.” This was confirmation, not apology. The room seemed to constrict on me. The charm magic was too much, the light too brilliant, the realization too abrupt and biting that I knew nothing. The one thing that I thought I understood, no, that I thought I had mastery over—I knew nothing. Discovering charmed music in Serafe had been surprising, no doubt, but this shook me. “It was how I knew, for certain, that I had made the right choice in bringing you here. In moving ahead with our plans with Fen. You can do all that I had hoped.”

Not now, I breathed. For now, only facts, no great plans for me and my skills. “And it’s still practiced here?”

“You know that charm casting is not tolerated in Kvyset now. Once, it was permitted, behind the closed doors of the religious orders. It was never allowed outside the orders, and eventually the Church fathers grew… afraid of its potential. At the time of the schism, those who could practice were arrested. The Order of the Golden Sphere was, of course, hit particularly hard. Those who would give up the art were allowed to return, under an oath of silence.” She traced a gilded window frame. “Enforced by the removal of their tongues.”

I shivered. “I’m not welcome here,” I whispered. “I should not have come.”

“The schism was centuries ago. Yet even now, any daughter born with an aptitude for seeing the Creator’s light is sent here. Sons are sent to our brother house. The fathers of our order test them, traveling to the churches. There is a ceremony of serving at the altar at Midwinter—the Child’s Mass—and it is used to determine if the children see the Creator’s light. The Order of the Golden Sphere houses them and keeps them safe and stupid in service to a Creator who endowed them with gifts greater than the Church fathers would allow.”

I touched the walls again, feeling as well as seeing the light infused in stone and mortar alike. The charm was not vague good fortune like I had manipulated on the ship; it was refined, for security, for safety, for endurance. “The charm has held fast since it was built?”

“It has not aged in five hundred years,” Alba confirmed. “It has not crumbled or required repair since it was built. It has withstood hail and snow and direct strikes from lightning. When the door is barred, no one outside can open it.”

“You didn’t bring me here only because you needed the resources of your house to contact the Fenians, did you?” I breathed in the beauty of the charm surrounding me one more time, acknowledging a masterful work of art that had long outlasted the hands that had made it.

“If you can revive the art of casting among my sisters, you will have an army of light at your disposal.”

And so will you, I agreed silently. Alba stood to gain much by allying herself with me—once the Order of the Golden Sphere unleashed charm casters for Galitha, the Kvys could not hold them back in their own country. And what of the darkness? Those questions would have to wait, I resolved. I had an ally who could help me deliver an army to my nation.

“Sastra-set.” A young sister, eyes downcast and hair wrapped in layers of sheer white linen, held out a battered letter.

Alba took it, then corrected the girl with a firm, “Va’rit-ma. Rit-na Sophie.” She handed the letter to me. “It is yours. Your correspondence will not be subject to inspection here.”

The paper was stained and the seal smudged, but I knew Theodor’s handwriting as surely as I knew his face or his hands. I prized up the seal, unfolding the letter like the precious artifact, borne over time and distance, that it was.

“They’re safe,” I breathed. Theodor and Kristos had reached the main Reformist army at Hazelwhite, and had been welcomed by the flagging forces. One of us would have been, I think, sufficient to raise their spirits, but together we represent much more—a leadership, along with Niko Otni in Galitha City, who will direct them to victory, he wrote. I could almost hear his voice—cautious optimism, steady vision. My father refuses to parlay, and even if he did, I fear the Royalists would bury him in their name and roll on without him. And so we must fight. Sianh has already begun working with the recruits, training them in field maneuvering and tactics, and will be well worth his pay. Already light troops harry and pick at the Royalist forces in the south; a pack of “foxes” as Sianh calls them even captured a supply wagon with, of all things, gunpowder and turnips.

I inhaled, slowly, breathing in hope. It will not be long, and we will be ready to meet the Royalists in open battle. And then, my love, we will need your light and your influence more than ever. We will need supplies, powder, shot, cannon. A navy. My trust is in you to acquire what we cannot win a war without. My hands stopped shaking; the gold circlet on my wrist ceased trembling. Theodor’s words were charge and assurance at once, promising me purpose.

My brother and the man I loved were holding on to their lives by a tenuous thread, waiting for me. Waiting for a war only I could wage.

I love you, he wrote at last. No flourishes, no grand words. No more needed to be said. I folded the letter and put it in my pocket, wanting to keep it close to me. A good-luck charm, even if it lacked magic, then turned to Alba.

“Let us begin now. We have very little time,” I said, voice steady and hands firm on the charmed stone my fellow casters had laid before me. This was the foundation on which I would build.