A Throne for Sisters

Sophia didn’t feel very brave right then. “You didn’t answer me about it being stupid. I mean, if one person guesses and hands me in – ”

“It won’t be me,” Cora promised her. “And yes, it could be stupid, but only if you do it badly. The fact that you’re here says you’ve been thinking about some of it, but have you thought it through? Who are you meant to be?”

“I thought I’d be a girl from the Merchant States,” Sophia said, falling into the trace of an accent she’d chosen. “Here…”

The truth was that she hadn’t thought of a reason.

“Being from across the water is good,” Cora said. “Even the accent is close enough to fool most people. Say that you’re here because of the wars. Your father was a minor noble from Meinhalt; it’s a town from in the old League. I’ve heard people talking about the battles there wiping it out, so no one will be able to check. It will also explain why you don’t have anything with you.”

Sophia of Meinhalt. It sounded good.

“Thank you,” Sophia said. “I would never – how do you know all this?”

Cora smiled. “People forget I’m there while I’m working on them. They talk, and I listen. Talking of which, sit there, and I’ll… well, not make you beautiful, you’re beautiful already, but make you what they expect.”

Sophia sat, and the other girl started to work, picking out foundation and rouge, eye shadow and lip color.

“How much do you know about the etiquette here?” Cora asked. “Do you know who people are?”

“I don’t know enough,” Sophia admitted. “Before, a fat man asked me for my dance card, and I don’t even know what that is. He started talking about someone called Hollenbroek, and I think I did the right thing, but I’m not sure.”

“Hollenbroek is an artist,” Cora explained. “Your dance card is a scrap of bone or ivory or slate to write the names of promised dance partners on. And if there’s a fat man asking about both, the odds are it’s Percy d’Auge. Avoid him, he’s a penniless lecher.”

She went on about the others there, the nobles and their families, the dowager and her two sons, Prince Rupert and Prince Sebastian.

“Prince Rupert stands to inherit,” she said. “He’s… well, everything you expect a prince to be: dashing, handsome, arrogant, useless. Sebastian is different, they say. He’s quieter. But you don’t need to worry about them. You need some minor nobleman, Phillipe van Anter, perhaps.”

As Cora went on, it became increasingly obvious to Sophia that she could never remember all of it. When she said as much, Cora shook her head.

“Don’t worry. Being from across the water, no one will expect you to know all of it. In fact, it would be suspicious if you did. There, I think you’re almost ready.”

Sophia looked at herself in the mirror. It was her, and yet somehow also not her. It was certainly a more beautiful version of her than anything she could have imagined. It was impossibly far from what she’d have been able to do for herself.

“One more thing,” Cora said. “I like the boots, but we both know what lies underneath. Take them off, and I’ll disguise your mark. No one will know.”

Sophia took her boots and stockings off, revealing the mark on her calf. Cora rubbed thick foundation over the spot, blending it in until it disappeared completely.

“There,” she said. “Now, if you seduce some minor nobleman, you won’t have to keep your boots on in bed.”

“Thank you,” Sophia said, hugging her. “Thank you so much for doing this.”

Cora smiled. “I’m lucky. I have a job I’m actually good at, in a place I don’t mind too much. But if I can help another like me, I will. And who knows? Maybe, once you’re a wealthy noblewoman, you’ll need a maid who knows how to make you look your best.”

Sophia nodded; she wouldn’t forget this. She stood in front of the mirrors, feeling now as if she were some old-fashioned knight, armored for battle. When she put on her mask, it was like pulling down her visor.

She was ready for battle.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Kate’s dreams were of the orphanage, which meant that they were of violence. She was standing in a classroom. Figures surrounded her, dressed in the robes of the nuns or in the plain tunics of the boys there.

They asked her questions that made no sense, about stupid things: the proper way to embroider a pillow, the principal exports of Southern Issettia. Things Kate couldn’t hope to answer.

They hit her with every failure. The sisters lashed out with belts or canes, while the boys simply used their fists. All the time, they chanted the same thing.

“You’re not fit to be a free girl. You’re not fit to be a free girl.”

Kate felt hands on her and she tried to twist and fight back. She turned to scratch and punch and bite, and it was only as she came back to herself that she realized that the hands holding her weren’t those of the boys or the Masked Sisters. Instead, Emeline stood over her, with a finger to her lips.

“Quiet,” she said. “Too much noise, and you’ll wake the barge hands.”

Kate managed to get a grip on herself in time to keep from shouting out of sheer contrariness and panic.

“I thought you were the barge hand,” Kate managed.

She saw Emeline shake her head. “They’re sleeping up front. Said they’d carry me upriver if I guided the boat while they slept.”

Kate didn’t feel quite as safe then. Her new friend had saved her, and Kate had assumed that it was just the two of them on the boat, making their way down the wide river. Now, there were men she didn’t know there somewhere, and a part of Kate wanted to go up to them and shove them off the boat just for the crime of daring to be there.

She didn’t really. It was just that she needed to hit something then, and the orphanage’s inhabitants weren’t close at hand. She wanted to go back there and burn it to the ground, just so that she could be sure that it was gone from her life. She wanted revenge for every humiliation and blow that had been landed on her in the years she’d been there.

“Hey, you’re safe now,” Emeline said. “There’s no need to worry. The ones who were chasing you won’t catch you now.”

Kate nodded, but there was a part of her that still didn’t believe it. The House of the Unclaimed wasn’t a place you left behind. Instead, it was somewhere to carry with you, always there no matter how far you ran. Maybe it was one reason why they didn’t bother to lock the doors.

In an effort to ignore it all, Kate looked around at the city. In the evening light, the fog that had encompassed it was starting to burn away, revealing the wide expanse of the river stretching out on either side of them, lit by sailors’ lamps and cut through with small sandbanks and eddy currents, patches of faster water and slow, meandering stretches.

The city on either side seemed just as varied. There were wooden buildings mixed with stone ones, some standing in orderly rows, others reaching out like fingers into the space belonging to the flowing water. Some of the buildings obviously used the river for their business, with pulley systems or jetties showing the spots where goods were loaded and unloaded. Others were simply there with views out over the water for wealthy inhabitants.

Kate saw one man sitting there, trying to paint the river scene by lamplight, and she found herself wondering why anyone would bother. It wasn’t beautiful, out there, was it? The city impinged on it too much for that. The water had the earthy sediment-and-sewage-filled smell of a waterway that people just threw things into. The river’s surface was too full of boats and barges to see the reeds along the edges, or the birds that flitted amongst them. It wasn’t anywhere that she would have wanted to paint.

“Careful,” Emeline said as Kate started to stand up. “There are bridges ahead. You don’t want to hit your head.”

Kate dutifully sat back down again, looking ahead to where there was indeed a long bridge stretching across the river, low enough that probably only low barges like this one could get past it.

“They have to have separate docks on the other side,” Emeline said. “Only the barges can go through without hitting their masts on it.”

She pushed with her long steering pole as they got closer, lining the barge up with one of the bridge’s arches. Kate could see spikes there, with the heads of criminals preserved in pitch so that they wouldn’t rot as quickly. She wondered what their crimes were. Theft? Treason? Something in between?

There were open spaces by the side of the river as well as buildings. In those spaces, Kate saw men drilling for war, working with wooden muskets and crossbows because no one wanted to spend money on the real thing for mere recruits. Some of them were drilling in squares with pikes, while a few, probably officers, were fencing in front of the others with rapiers.

“You look as though you want to swim across and join them,” Emeline said.

“Wouldn’t you?” Kate said. “To be that strong, with no one to tell you what to do again.”

Emeline laughed at that. “In one of the mercenary crews? All they have is people giving them orders. Besides, would you want to go across the Knife-Water and risk your life for some cause that doesn’t mean anything?”

Kate wasn’t sure about that. Put the way Emeline said it, the idea sounded like folly, but it also sounded like a chance of adventure.

“Besides, you might not have to go abroad if the rumors are true,” Emeline said.

With most people, Kate would have read their thoughts to try to understand what they meant, but when she reached out for the other girl’s, she couldn’t see inside.

Kate, Emeline sent, don’t you know that’s rude?

“I’m sorry,” Kate said. She didn’t want to upset her new friend. “What did you mean, though?”

“Just that wars have a habit of not staying where you want them,” Emeline replied. “People talk as though the Knife-Water is some unassailable gap, rather than just twenty miles of calm sea.”

Kate hadn’t thought about it that way. When she’d heard about the wars across the water between the fragmented states there, it had always seemed like something happening on the other side of the world. In truth, parts of the lands there were probably closer to Ashton than the watermills of the north, or the granite mountain spaces beyond that.

“So, you’re not planning to run off and join one of the companies,” Kate said. “What then? Why are you finding rides to take you upriver?”

Emeline half closed her eyes, and Kate knew that there was some daydream or other flickering behind those eyelids.

“For Stonehome,” Emeline said in a voice that seemed caught up in the rapture of it for a moment.

“Stonehome?” Kate said. “What’s that?”

She saw the other girl’s eyes widen in surprise. “You don’t know? But you… you’re like me. You can hear thoughts!”

She probably said that a little louder than she intended. Certainly, it was the loudest thing she’d said since Kate had woken up.

“Stonehome is a place for people like us,” Emeline said. “They say that it’s a place where we can be safe, and others won’t attack us for what we can do.”

Kate wasn’t sure that she believed such a place could exist. She barely believed that other people with the same gift as her were out there in the world. She’d been so sure that it was just her and her sister, for so long.

“You’re sure this place exists?” Kate asked. It barely seemed possible.

“I’ve… heard rumors,” Emeline said. “I’m not sure where it is exactly. If it were in the open, it would be too dangerous. They say it’s out past the Ridings somewhere. I figured that I could focus on getting out of the city, then find it afterwards. I mean, people go there; it can’t be impossible to find.”

It seemed to be a lot for the other girl to pin her hopes on, but at least the boat was a good way for them to get out of the city. And maybe trying to find a place where those like them could be safe wasn’t such a bad dream to have.

“What was it like, in the orphanage?” Emeline asked.

Kate shook her head. “Worse than you could imagine. They treated us as if we weren’t even people, not really. Just inconvenient things to be shaped and sold.”

It was what they’d been, in a way. The House of the Unclaimed pretended to be a place of safety for abandoned children, but in fact, it was a kind of factory for indentured servants, existing to provide them with skills that would make them useful once they reached an age to be sold.

“What about you?” Kate asked. “How did you come to be on a boat like this?”

Emeline shrugged. “I lived out on the streets for a while. It was… hard.”

Kate knew how much pain could fit into a pause like that one. She reached out to wrap an arm around the other girl.

“I used to keep watch for… well, they were thieves, basically,” Emeline said. “They’d go into eating houses and inns, and they’d walk out in other people’s clothes, complete with whatever was in the pockets. I could tell them when there were people paying attention to them.”

Kate thought of the ways she’d had to use her own powers to steal. “What happened?”

Emeline shrugged. “I caught some of their thoughts. They were thinking of getting rid of me. They thought I was too soft-hearted.”

Kate could guess how hard that must have been. She was about to offer her new friend sympathy when she heard the sound of footsteps. This was what she hated about her talent: that it was so hit and miss. Why couldn’t it warn her about every potential problem?

She turned in time to see a large barge hand standing over them, his barrel chest straining at the limits of his beer-stained shirt, hands closing into fists.

“A witch child! I let a witch child onto my barge? And there are two of you now? No, I won’t have it! Get off my barge.”

“Wait a minute,” Kate said.

“Get off my barge, I said,” he snapped. He snatched Emeline’s steering pole from her easily, holding it the way one of the soldiers on the banks might have held a pike. “They say witches can’t swim. Let’s find out!”

He struck at Emeline first, knocking her back into the water as she gave a small sound of surprise. Kate stood, squaring up to the man, wishing then that she had a sword with which to stab him.

She didn’t, though, and there was nowhere on the barge to dodge as the pole came swinging around in an arc. She felt the air rush out of her with the impact of it as it struck her in the abdomen, and for a moment, Kate felt herself airborne.

The water of the river hit her in a cold slap across her entire body. Kate sank, and for a moment she found herself wondering if maybe the barge hand had been right about her not floating. Then she kicked, bobbing to the surface like a cork and gasping for breath.

It didn’t last for long. There was another boat coming straight toward her. Kate managed to push away from it in time, but the movement sent her back under the water again. She found herself looking up at the hulls of the passing boats, trying to find a clear space to come up in.

The water was cold, even in the heat of the day. Cold enough that Kate’s body wanted to gasp with it, but she resisted the urge. She swam for the surface, managing to come up between two boats sculling themselves along with large oars.

“Help me!” Kate called out, but the men on them laughed.

“You’ll have to swim for it, whelp,” one called back. “No place for your sort here.”

Kate wished that she could stab them all right then, but she could barely even keep her head above the water. She looked around, trying to find Emeline, but there was no sign of her there. Had she been pulled away by the currents of the river, or… no, she wouldn’t think like that.

Emeline? Kate sent, or tried to. Her powers weren’t consistent at the best of times, and drowning in the middle of a river was not the best of times. She thought she caught a glimpse of a bobbing head somewhere between more boats, and tried to swim in that direction.

The currents wouldn’t let her. What had seemed like gentle eddies when she’d been on the boat now turned out to be stronger things that snatched at Kate’s limbs and threatened to pull her under at any moment. There was no way she could swim in the direction Emeline had been. It was all she could do to swim sideways, across the current, aiming for the bank while the river swept her downstream.

She tried to get a grip on the bridge as the river pulled her back through it, but the brickwork was too slick with moss and slime. She kept swimming on the far side, hoping that if she could just get to one of the banks, she could run along, spot Emeline, and maybe throw her a rope or something. Help her, somehow.

This side of the bridge was, if anything, even busier. There were oars cutting through the water, and poles, and keels, so that Kate had to dodge with every stroke she swam. Finally, finally, she found herself in calmer water, and her aching muscles managed to pull her closer to the far bank. Kate felt her hands close over a jetty, and she succeeded in pulling herself up.

For a minute or more, she lay there on the wood of the thing, sucking in air. Her arms burned from fighting the current. Her clothes were soaked and filthy from immersion in the cold water of the river. She felt, right then, as though she might just curl up and die there.

Instead, Kate sat up, forcing herself to scan the river for signs of Emeline.

Are you there? she sent, hoping for some reply from the other girl, but her powers were never as simple as that. Kate had only just learned that she could communicate with someone other than her sister; the odds of being able to connect to Emeline again seemed remote. The best that Kate could hope for was to spot the other girl floating down the river, borne there by the currents.

Yet she’d gone into the water first. She might already have been swept further downstream. Kate tried to run along the bank looking for her, but she didn’t have the strength for it, and in any case, it was hopeless. She saw no sign of the other girl. At best, she had been swept ashore miles away. At worst, she would be dead somewhere under the water.

That thought made Kate’s stomach knot, but the truth was that there was nothing she could do.

She stopped and looked around. She didn’t know where she was in Ashton now. She’d been trying to get out of the city, but the river had carried her back a long way. She was alone again, wet, tired, cold, and alone.

Kate knelt down and cried.

Sophia, she sent. Where are you?

She waited, too long, in the silence, until she finally realized her sister could not hear her.

CHAPTER NINE

Sophia made her way back through the palace, trying to look more confident than she felt. From what she’d seen of the noble girls around there so far, they never admitted to a single moment of uncertainty.

It helped that she could see the crowds starting to form, drifting through the castle with a cluster of others. She caught some of the looks they gave her, and for a moment or two, she was worried they saw through her disguise. When one of the older women came up to her, Sophia was sure that they would unmask her, and send her back to the orphanage. Her talent gave her some reassurance.

Who is she? Must be new. We’d all have noticed a girl that beautiful, I’m sure. Reminds me a little of myself at that age. I’m sure there will be rumors.

“Welcome,” the older woman said, offering her hand. “I am Lady Olive Casterston.”

“Sophia… of Meinhalt,” Sophia said, taking the woman’s hand, remembering both her adopted voice and name just in time. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

Oh, from the Merchant States. No wonder I haven’t heard of her. I suppose it explains the way she took my hand with no curtsey, too.

Sophia stretched her talents out as she talked, reading what she could from the woman. She didn’t seem suspicious. If anything, she seemed determined to be friendly. They chattered about nothing, and Sophia used it as a moment to keep reading the room.

“Forgive me if my habits are not what you are used to,” Sophia said. “Things are… very different here, I think.”

“I hope not too different,” Lady Olive said. “But I suppose, with the war… oh, you poor thing. Were you caught up in all that? Come on, come with me. I’ll introduce you to people. Sir Jeffrey, this is Sophia of Meinhalt, you simply must meet her.”

Just like that, Sophia found herself meeting a string of people so quickly that it was impossible to keep track of who was who. Lady Olive stayed with her for the first few, presenting a picture of a girl fleeing from the wars on the continent that meant Sophia never had to tell an outright lie, just… let people go on thinking what they were thinking.

She knew what they were thinking, of course, and her powers were the only reason she kept afloat in the sea of people she had to meet. They let her get glimpses of what these people expected, and catch fragments of information that let them think she had at least heard about the politics of Ashton.

She let the tide of people she simply had to meet carry her to the ballroom, and there, Sophia had to fight back the urge to gasp at the sheer spectacle of it all.

“Is everything all right, dear?” a retired officer asked her, clearly hoping for a chance to be gallant. Obviously, she hadn’t done such a good job of disguising her shock at it all.

How could she, though? Every wall of the ballroom was mirrored, the mirrors surrounded by golden frames. The floor was a masterpiece of inlaid wood, forming a map of the known world that even contained some of the discovered lands beyond the ocean. There were chandeliers above that looked as though they held a thousand candles between them, while a trio of gold-clad musicians occupied a small space to one side. There was no space on the walls for paintings, but the architects had made up for it with a fresco above them in the modern style, making it look as though the ballroom opened out onto some great pastoral landscape.

“Miss?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” Sophia assured him. “It’s just that I never thought I would see an occasion like this… again.” Sophia of Meinhalt would have attended such things before, of course. “Thank you for asking, though.”

There was no dancing yet. Instead, those attending ate quails’ eggs and wine-poached apples, drank delicate wines from goblets or took them over to what appeared to be a small fountain in one corner, flowing with the deep red of it.

Mostly, though, they appeared to jockey for position like folk at a market looking for the best bargains, or like armies seeking the highest ground. Perhaps both, because there certainly seemed to be a little of each thing in the room. The fragments of thought Sophia grasped made it clear that there was more than just dancing going on.

Surely I can’t rank below him?

How did the Earl of Charlke afford the new house he’s talking about?

Will my daughter find a husband tonight? She’s nearly twenty!

Sophia had held an image of things like this as stately, graceful affairs, but the flickering thoughts of those around her made it clear just how much was going on beneath the surface. It seemed as though every gesture, every word, was a part of some greater game of position and advancement. Everyone there seemed to be attending because they wanted something, even if it was just to show the power and position they already possessed.

There was grace there, though. Some of the girls there looked as elegant as swans in their costumes, while everyone seemed to have done their best with their outfits and their masks. It was the kind of occasion that somewhere else might have made everyone anonymous, but here served more to show off their taste and their ability to afford the finest things.

Or steal them, in Sophia’s case.

She glided through the room with delicate steps, listening to both the gossip that the nobles traded among themselves and the deeper layer beneath it that they only thought. She heard rumors about which men and women had lost at cards or betting on horses, alongside deeper worries from those who suspected that this time they might not be able to pay their debts. She heard the stories of affairs and infidelities, and her talent let her pick out the ones that were true from the ones that were being spread deliberately to cause trouble.