The Sweet Far Thing (42 page)

“Perhaps I have no dark corners.”

A thin rasp of a laugh comes from the well. “If that were true, I should be out there and you would be in here.”

I start to answer but no words come.

“You must know what the magic will cost you.”

“Cost me?” I repeat.

“Everything has its price.” She takes another shuddering breath. “I’ve not spoken so much…in ages. I must rest now.”

I hurry to the well, where she floats, her eyes closing. “Wait! But what about Tom and the Rakshana and Pippa and the Winterlands? I have more questions! You said you would help me!”

“And so I did,” she answers, drifting into the well’s depths. “Search those dark corners, Gemma. Before you find yourself caught there.”

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I can’t believe I’ve given so much and gotten so little in return. I should never have thought to trust Circe in the first place.

“I won’t be back until the day I return the magic to the Temple—the day you die,” I say, storming from the room.

When I emerge from behind the curtain, Asha is there. She sits upon a small mat with her legs crossed, shelling bright orange peas into a bowl. Behind her, several Hajin sort through bushels of poppies, selecting only the brightest blooms, discarding the rest.

Asha gestures to me. “Might I have a word, Lady Hope?”

I sit beside her on the mat, but I can scarcely keep still. I’m far too agitated by my conversation with Circe, and angrier with myself for having trusted her.

“I have considered your offer,” Asha says. “I believe it best the Hajin not join your alliance.”

“Not join? But why?”

Asha’s fingers work diligently at separating the pea from its useless husk. “We do not wish to become involved in such a struggle. It is not our way.”

“But, Asha, with a share of the magic, your people could become a power in the realms. You could change your lot. You could cure—”

I bite the words off, afraid I will offend her. The Hajin cast a curious glance at me. Asha nods to them, and bowing, they take their leave.

“Back in the dark time, we were persecuted. Treated as slaves. Murdered for sport,” Asha explains.

“And then the Order came and made us safe. Since the talk of an alliance, that safety has been in question. Our people have been taunted in the fields and beyond. A Hajin was whipped at the river by centaurs. And just last night, a crop of poppies was stolen—only a small basket, but it is enough.”

I ball my hands into fists. “That will not stand! I shall speak to Philon at once!”

Asha shakes her head. “No. We shall withdraw. Here, away from all, we are safe.”

I look about at the rugged caves where they have lived in exile for centuries. “But you are forced to live in these caves. How is that safety?”

Asha smooths her sari over her blistered legs. “It is best not to question.”

“Would you make that decision for the rest of your people?”

She drops the peas into a bowl with a hard clatter. “They should not know everything. It will only bring discontent.”

“For whom?” I ask.

“It is for the best,” she says as if it’s a mantra.

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One of the Hajin approaches. Her face is limned with worry. “It is not a good harvest, Asha,” she says in apology. “We have lost many flowers to frost and blight.”

Asha frowns. “Frost?”

The Untouchable opens her blistered hand to reveal a poppy withered and blue with cold. “They do not survive.”

“Here,” I say. I put my hand to it and new poppies spring out, fat and red. “That is what you could do if you wanted.”

The girl looks hopefully to Asha, who shakes her head.

“That way does not last,” Asha answers. She plucks the first blossom from the Hajin girl’s hand and throws it into the rubbish pile.

I take the path through the willows again. The majestic branches fan out over my head, and I walk through the cocoon of them, lost in thought. What plan does the Order have for me? Could they have killed Wilhelmina Wyatt to silence her, and if so, what secret did she hold that was worth murdering for?

How can I help govern the realms when the very people who would form my alliance do not trust one another?

Even the promise of seeing Pip and the others in the Borderlands doesn’t soothe me just now. They will not want to hear of my troubles. They’ll want to dance. To play merry games. To make ball gowns from thin air and capes from threadbare tapestries. And when Felicity and Pippa are together, it is as if the rest of us do not exist. Their friendship is exclusive. I am envious of their closeness, and I hate myself for it. I cannot decide which is worse—the envy or the small, petty way it makes me feel inside.

A little dust storm kicks up along the road. It is followed by a galloping sound. My heart quickens. It’s gaining fast and I cannot possibly outrun it this time. I try to squeeze between the willows but there is not enough room. Magic. But what? Cloak myself. What, what, what? Can’t think. Illusion. An illusion. But what?
Look about, Gemma. What is here?
Road. Sky. Dust. Willow. A willow tree!

He’s getting closer.

Let go of the fear. Let go. Let go.
I feel the magic working within me, and I can only hope it has obeyed. When I look at my hands, they appear as branches. I’ve done it. I’ve masked myself.

The rider slows to a trot and then stops altogether. I can scarcely breathe for my fear. It’s Amar. He wears a cape of animal skins—the animals’ eyes still move within it—and a helmet made of human skulls.

His eyes are black holes, and I bite back a scream.
Don’t lose your purpose, Gemma. Calm, calm…

The horse is an unearthly thing with eyes like Pip’s have been at times. It snorts and bares its teeth while Amar searches the path.

“I know you are here,” he calls. “I smell your power. Your innocence.”

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My heart beats faster than I am certain it can bear. A crow flies from tree to tree, and I fear it shall find me out. It flies instead to Amar and settles on his shoulder.

“The time nears. Beware the birth of May.”

He kicks the horse’s flanks and rides off in a cloud of dust.

I stay hidden for a full count of one hundred, and then I run hard and fast for the Borderlands.

I want to tell them about Circe, but I’m afraid. How can I possibly confess that she is still alive? That I’ve gone to her for counsel? That I’ve given her magic? I’m ill when I think of what I’ve done, of the risk I’ve taken. And for what? Rubbish. Admonitions to search my dark corners, as if she weren’t the most evil soul I’ve ever met.

Once I reach the castle and see my friends laughing and playing a game of catch, I’m cheered considerably. It was a mistake seeing Circe, and one I’ll not make again. I won’t go back until it is time to return the magic and make the alliance, the day she’ll be gone from our world forever.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

WE WAKE TO A GLORIOUSSUNDAY MORNING FULL OFcolor and dappled with a soft light that blurs the landscape into the sort of palette that might please Mr. Monet. After a hideously dull sermon, compliments of the half-dead Reverend Waite, Mrs. Nightwing offers a reward for our saintly endurance by asking our help in preparing for Spence’s masked ball. We are turned out of doors in our artists’ smocks with paintbrushes in the pockets. On the back lawn, long stretches of canvas have been spread out on tables. Pots of paint hold down the corners. Miss McCleethy directs us to paint pastoral scenes befitting a paradise so that we may employ them as scenery for our masked ball performances.

The only scene that comes to my mind is the ridiculous frolicking Pan in pantaloons from my grandmother’s home in London. I refuse to copy that monstrosity, though the prospect of outfitting him in a corset is rather tempting.

Felicity is hard at work. Her brush dips from pot to pot, and when I see the castle emerge, I smile and add the craggy mountains of the Winterlands behind it. Miss McCleethy walks between the tables, her hands behind her back. She makes improvements with her paintbrush, correcting a bush here, a flower there. It is quite annoying and I have the thought of painting a mustache on Miss McCleethy.

“What is this?” Miss McCleethy frowns at our picture of the Borderlands in progress.

“A fairy tale,” Felicity answers. She adds touches of purple berries to a tree.

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“Fairy tales are rather treacherous. How does this one end?”

Felicity’s smile is a challenge. “Happily ever after.”

“It’s a bit dreary.” Miss McCleethy grabs a paintbrush and dabs a bright pinkish orange over the churning gray of my distant Winterlands sky. It doesn’t improve it; it only makes it into a muddy mess with a false dash of color.

“That helps,” she says. “Carry on.”

“Monster,” Felicity mutters under her breath. “Promise you won’t give her a drop of magic, Gemma.”

“I shouldn’t share with her if my life depended upon it,” I vow.

In the afternoon, the Gypsy women come bearing baskets of jams and other sweets. We slather jam on bread, not caring about our paint-smeared fingers. Miss McCleethy asks if one of the Gypsies might be hired to chop firewood, and a short while later, Kartik comes, and the heat rises in my face. He removes his coat, rolls his shirtsleeves to his elbows, and takes the ax to a tree.

Miss McCleethy leaves us so that she might inquire after the East Wing’s progress, and I sneak over to where Kartik is working. His shirt is damp and clings to him. I offer him water. He glances toward McCleethy, who pays not a whit of attention to us. Satisfied, he gulps the water and wipes the back of his hand across his forehead.

“Thank you,” he says, smiling in a curious way.

“What is so amusing?” I ask.

“I’m reminded of the oddest dream I had.” He rubs his thumb across his lower lip.

The blush begins at my toenails and whooshes up to my face. “Well,” I say, fumbling with the water bucket. “It was only a dream.”

“If you remember, I believe in dreams,” he says, gazing at me in such a way that I find I must look elsewhere to keep from kissing him again.

“I…I need to speak to you about an urgent matter,” I say. “Mr. Fowlson paid me a visit in London.

We’d been invited to dinner at the Hippocrates Society. He was waiting outside.”

Kartik pulls the ax from its resting place in the tree stump. His jaw tightens. “What did he want?”

“The magic. I told him I’d given it to the Order, but he didn’t believe me. He threatened trouble, and when Thomas returned home the next evening, he told me he’d been asked to join an exclusive gentlemen’s club. There on his lapel was the pin of the Rakshana.”

“That would not be given idly. He is being courted,” Kartik says.

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“I must meet with the Rakshana,” I say. “Can you arrange it?”

“No.” He brings the ax down with new determination.

“They could hurt my brother!”

“He’s his own man.”

“How can you be so hard? You had a brother.”

“Once.” He swings the ax again, and the log is cleaved in two.

“Please…,” I say.

Kartik glances again at the East Wing, then nods toward the laundry house. “Not here. In there.”

I wait inside the laundry. There are no washerwomen today; the old wood-and-stone room is empty.

Impatiently, I pace, past the stove where the flatirons are lined up to be heated. I step around the big copper tubs and bang my knuckles against the ribbed washboards lying inside, flit past the hooks holding the possers—those long sticks with flared ends for pushing the clothes about. I give the mangle’s wheel a churn. I know it works wonders on the wet clothes, squeezing every bit of water from them as they pass through its long rollers. How I wish I could pass my sodden thoughts through the machine, releasing the heaviness weighing me down.