Морган Райс
A Throne for Sisters
CHAPTER SIX
Kate was enjoying the city more than she would have thought possible alone. She still ached with the loss of her sister, and she still wanted to get out into the open countryside, but for now, Ashton was her playground.
She made her way through the city streets, and there was something particularly appealing about being lost in the crowds. Nobody looked her way, any more than they looked at the other urchins or apprentices, younger sons or would-be fighters of the town. In her boyish costume and with the short spikes of her hair, Kate could have passed for any of them.
There was so much to see in the city, and not just the horses that Kate cast a covetous eye over every time she passed one. She paused opposite a vendor selling hunting weapons out of a wagon, the light crossbows and occasional muskets looking impossibly grand. If Kate could have snatched one, she would have, but the man kept a careful eye on everyone who came close.
Not everyone was so careful, though. She managed to snatch a hunk of bread from a café table, a knife from where someone had used it to pin up a religious pamphlet. Her talent wasn’t perfect, but knowing where people’s thoughts and attention were was a big advantage when it came to the city.
She kept on, looking for an opportunity to take more of what she would need for life out in the country. It was spring, but that just meant rain instead of snow most days. What would she need? Kate started to check things off on her fingers. A bag, twine to make traps for animals, a crossbow if she could get one, an oilskin to keep the rain off, a horse. Definitely a horse, despite all the risks that horse thievery brought with it.
Not that any of it was truly safe. There were gibbets on some of the corners holding the bones of long dead criminals, preserved so that the lesson could last. Over one of the old gates, ruined in the last war, there were three skulls on spikes that were supposedly those of the traitor chancellor and his conspirators. Kate wondered how anybody knew anymore.
She spared a glance for the palace in the distance, but that was only because she hoped that Sophia was all right. That kind of place was for the likes of the dowager queen and her sons, the nobles and their servants trying to shut out the troubles of the real world with their parties and their hunts, not real people.
“Hey, boy, if you’ve got coin to spend, I’ll show you a good time,” a woman called from the doorway of a house whose purpose was obvious even if it had no sign. A man who could have wrestled bears stood on the door, while Kate could hear the sounds of people enjoying themselves too much even though it wasn’t dark yet.
“I’m not a boy,” she snapped back.
The woman shrugged. “I’m not picky. Or come in and make yourself some coin. The old lechers like the boyish ones.”
Kate stalked on, not dignifying that with an answer. That wasn’t the life she had planned for herself. Nor was stealing to gain everything she wanted.
There were other opportunities that seemed more interesting. Everywhere she looked, it seemed that there were recruiters for one or other of the free companies, declaring their high pay in relation to the others, or their better rations, or the glory to be won in the wars across the Knife-Water.
Kate actually wandered up to one of them, a hearty-looking man in his fifties, wearing a uniform that seemed better suited to a player’s idea of war than the real thing.
“Ho there, boy! Are you looking for adventure? For derring-do? For the possibility of death at the swords of your enemies? Well, you’ve come to the wrong place!”
“The wrong place?” Kate said, not even caring that he too had thought she was a boy.
“Our general is Massimo Caval, the most famously cautious of fighting men. Never does he engage unless he can win. Never does he waste his men in fruitless confrontations. Never does he – ”
“So you’re saying he’s a coward?” Kate asked.
“A coward is the best thing to be in a war, believe me,” the recruiter said. “Six months running ahead of enemy forces while they get bored, with only occasional looting to liven things up. Think of it, the life, the… wait, you’re not a boy, are you?”
“No, but I can still fight,” Kate insisted.
The recruiter shook his head. “Not for us, you can’t. Be off with you!”
In spite of his defense of cowardice, the recruiter looked as though he might cuff her around the head if Kate stayed there, so she kept walking.
So many things in the city made little sense. The House of the Unclaimed had been a cruel place, but at least it had possessed a kind of order. Half the time, in the city, it seemed that people did whatever they wanted, with little input from the city’s rulers. The city itself certainly seemed to have no plan to it. Kate crossed a bridge that had been built up with stalls and stages and even small houses until there was barely enough room to use it for its intended purpose. She found herself walking down streets that spiraled back on themselves, down alleys that somehow became the roofs of houses at a lower elevation, then gave way to ladders.
As for the people on the streets, the whole city seemed insane. There seemed to be someone shouting on every corner, declaring the elements of their personal philosophy, demanding attention for the performance they were about to put on, or denouncing the kingdom’s involvement in the wars across the water.
Kate ducked into doorways as she saw the masked figures of priests and nuns about the inscrutable business of the Masked Goddess, but after the third or fourth time she kept walking. She saw one flailing a chain of prisoners, and she found herself wondering what part of the goddess’s mercy that represented.
There were horses everywhere in the city. They pulled carriages, they bore riders, and some of the larger ones pulled carts full of everything from stone to beer. Seeing them was one thing; stealing one was proving to be quite another.
In the end, Kate picked a spot outside an ostler’s shop, moving closer and waiting for her moment. To steal something as big as a horse, she needed more than just a moment of inattention, but in principle it was no different from stealing a pie. She could feel the thoughts of the stable hands as they roved and wandered. One was bringing out a fine-looking mare, thinking about the noblewoman it was intended for.
Damn it, she’ll need a side saddle, not this.
The thought was all the invitation Kate needed. She moved forward as the ostler rushed back inside, probably thinking that no one could take a horse in the brief space he would be gone. Kate wove her way in between the pedestrians who littered the street, imagining the moment when her hands would finally close around the reins —
“Got you!” a voice said as a hand clamped down on her shoulder.
For a moment, Kate thought that someone had guessed what she intended to do, but as the figure who’d grabbed her spun Kate back toward him, she recognized the truth: it was one of the boys from the orphanage.
She squirmed to get away, and he hit her, hard, catching her in the stomach. Kate fell down to her knees, and she saw two other boys coming up fast.
“They sent us out after you when you got away,” the oldest of them said. “Said that girls went for more than boys, and that they could send hunters for all of us if necessary.”
He sounded bitter about that, and Kate didn’t blame him. The House of the Unclaimed was an evil place, but it was also the only home the orphans there had.
She did blame him for the next punch, which rocked her head back.
“That’s for the beating you gave us with that poker of yours,” he said. “And this is for the beating the priests gave us after.”
He punctuated it with slaps that rocked Kate where she knelt.
“We’ve been out here more than a day now,” the oldest said. “I’m hungry, I’m tired, and I want to go back. I’m due to go into the army soon, and you’ll not ruin that for me. So I’m going to drag you back there, but not before you tell me where your bitch of a sister is.”
Kate shook her head while he hit her again. She silently vowed vengeance for this moment, even though right then she couldn’t even stand, let alone do anything about it all. She rolled up her hatred, tucking it deep inside with her anger at the sisters who’d brought her up so cruelly, and at the world that had stolen her parents in the first place.
Her hatred didn’t do anything to keep the blows away, though, or deflect the questions that punctuated them like arrows.
“Where is your sister?” he demanded. “Where? She’s the one they’ll indenture for better coin.”
“I don’t know,” Kate insisted. “I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”
She could see people walking past now. Some did it with fixed expressions, others glancing across then looking away as they decided that they didn’t want to get involved. Kate saw a young man wearing the apron of a carpenter’s apprentice walking past, and his thoughts flickered through her mind.
I wish I could help, but they’re bigger than me, and maybe she deserves it, and what if —
“If you want to help, help!” Kate yelled across to him.
He turned in surprise, and actually started to step toward them out of sheer embarrassment.
“Stay out of this,” the eldest of the boys snapped at him, but Kate didn’t need more than just that single moment of distraction.
She kicked away from him like a swimmer pushing off from the shore, then scrambled to her feet and ran. Behind her, Kate heard the shouts of the boys following, but she ignored them and kept going, not even caring about the direction she took. She headed for the thickest parts of the crowd, thinking she could slip through while the others would be slowed, then took off down an alley at random, hoping to lose them.
It didn’t work. Kate didn’t have to look around to know that. She could feel their thoughts on her, honed to a sharp edge the way a hunting dog’s might have been. The only promising sign was that one of Ashton’s evening mists was coming down, making it harder to see anything, let alone one fleeing girl.
Kate ran down toward the river, on the basis that the mist was always thickest there when it came. Sure enough, it thickened into fog, so that Kate could barely see the length of the streets she ran down.
She reached a crumbling set of docks, against which plenty of small boats were mooring up for the night. Others were risking the fog, rowing through it or putting up small sails while guided by the light of oil-burning lamps.
Kate started to look around for somewhere to hide. She couldn’t run from the boys chasing from her forever, but maybe she could wait until they’d passed by. Already, she couldn’t see them in the fog; she could only hear them approaching. She headed out onto one of the crumbling piers used to moor the boats.
She’ll hide on a boat. We need to search them.
That thought sent fear running through Kate. She’d been so certain that this would work, but now… she couldn’t hide, she couldn’t turn back. What could she do?
This way, a voice said in her mind, and this wasn’t like reading the thoughts of the boys. It was more like the moments when her sister contacted her. Jump to me.
Kate turned and saw a barge going past, filled with the detritus of the city, lit by red and green lamps to show those approaching which way it was heading. A girl her age stood on the back, using a long wooden pole to guide it. As Kate watched, she lifted the pole from the water, holding it out.
Kate stood there in shock for a moment or two. She’d always thought that she and Sophia were unique; that they were alone in the world in that sense as well as all the others. The thought that there might be someone who could send her thoughts across to Kate was enough to make her freeze, trying to make sense of it.
What are you waiting for? Jump!
Kate flung herself forward, and even in springtime, the water was enough to knock the breath from her. They hadn’t bothered teaching the girls to swim in the orphanage, so Kate spent a moment flailing before her hand closed around the pole the other girl was holding out.
She was stronger than she looked, reeling Kate in with the pole the way someone else might have hauled in a fish. Kate gasped as she pulled her way onto the barge.
“Here,” the girl said, holding out a blanket. “You look like you need it.”
Kate took it, gratefully. While she wrapped it around herself, she looked at the other girl, who was small, blonde, and streaked with the dirt of the things she shepherded down the river. She wore a leather apron over a dress that had probably been blue once, although now it was closer to brown.
“I’m Kate,” she managed.
The other girl smiled. “Emeline. Quiet now. Whoever’s after you, they won’t see us in the mist.”
Kate huddled down in the stern of the boat, watching the docks, or at least what she could see of them. They were quickly fading away behind a wall of fog as the barge kept moving.
As they disappeared from view completely, Kate dared to breathe a sigh of relief. She’d done it.
She’d escaped them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sophia could hardly believe that she was inside the palace. Back at the House of the Unclaimed, it had seemed like a magical place; another world that the likes of her could only hope to set foot in if they found themselves indentured to the right nobles through some special skill.
Now, she was there, thanks to little more than the willingness to fool those who wanted to believe in her, and the courage to actually try. Sophia couldn’t help a note of amazement at that, and at the space around her.
It was beautiful, it was elegant, and it was about as far from the orphanage as any building could hope to be. Instead of cramped conditions, there were high ceilings and spacious rooms that seemed to have been designed more as displays of opulence than simply as places to live. There were soft chairs and chaises carved in the elaborate style that had come in from across the water, thick carpets from the water looms of the Merchant States, and even a few worked silver statuettes from further off, in the lands where it was said that men had never even heard of the Masked Goddess.
This palace was everything Sophia had ever wanted.
No, not everything. This was a beautiful place to be, but it wasn’t enough to simply get here. Sophia had to find a way to stay. She’d come here in the hopes that there would be a way to find a life among the nobles. A way to be safe.
Sophia didn’t feel very safe right then. There were paintings on the walls of beautiful women and strong-looking men, probably representing different facets of the kingdom’s noble lines. Right then, Sophia probably looked like one of the women, but she felt as though that façade was as thin as one of the canvases, easy to tear through and likely to fall away at any moment.
“Focus,” she told herself, trying to act the way she thought a foreign noblewoman would on arriving in the palace. She walked through the crowds of people there, smiling beneath her half mask and nodding, pausing to admire paintings and sculptures.
There were nobles there – other nobles, Sophia corrected herself – standing in groups and laughing amongst themselves as they waited for the ball to begin. She saw a group of young women of perhaps her age, all wearing dresses that had probably taken someone weeks of work to produce. One, resplendent in a gossamer blue gown that seemed designed to show off her figure, was complaining to the others from beneath the ivory oval of her mask.
“I sent my servant there, and you’ll never guess what happened. Someone had taken my dress. My dress!”
Sophia held her breath, feeling certain that at any moment, the girl would turn and see her; would spot the dress she was wearing and denounce her as not just a fraud but a thief. Sophia guessed that this was “Milady D’Angelica,” as the dressmaker had called her.
“I never even got to see my dress,” the girl continued, and Sophia dared to breathe a sigh of relief. “I had to settle for one the dressmaker had ready for some burgher’s daughter.”
One of the others, whose mask formed an elaborate bird’s beak, laughed. “At least that means there will be less riffraff in here.”
The others laughed along with her, and the girl who had been complaining about her dress nodded.
“Come on,” she said. “It will be time for the dancing soon, and I want my makeup just so, if some handsome young man happens to unmask me. Perhaps one of the dowager’s sons will want to kiss me.”
“Angelica, you are daring,” one of the others said.
Sophia hadn’t thought of that. She’d come here with some half-formed thought of being able to fit in at court and marry some rich man, but she hadn’t thought enough to consider what she would do if she had to take her mask off. Presumably, somewhere in between her coming to the party and living happily ever after, someone would want to see her face?
So she followed them, trying not to make it look too obvious as she went, pausing to look at the statuary there.
“Ah, you’re admiring the latest Hollenbroek,” a fat man said.
A truly awful thing, but it’s what I’m expected to say.
“I think it’s awful,” Sophia said, with the slight fleck of an accent she’d picked out to let the nobles forgive any of her mistakes. “Excuse me, though, I still need to do my makeup for the ball.”
“Then perhaps we can dance later,” he suggested. “If you have your dance card…”
“My dance card?” Sophia asked, puzzled. She couldn’t see the man frown beneath his mask, but she could feel his confusion. “Yes, of course. I don’t seem to have it with me at the moment.”
She walked away swiftly even though she knew it was rude. It was better than being found out because she didn’t know the rules that these people had. Besides, the noble girls were almost out of sight.
Sophia followed them to a small antechamber, glancing inside to see a girl perhaps a couple of years older than she wearing the gray of an indentured servant, standing there surrounded by mirrors and brushes while the girls sat themselves on high-backed chairs in front of her. The servant had dark hair that fell short of her shoulders, and features that might have been pretty if she’d been allowed to use any of the tools of her trade on herself. As it was, she mostly looked overworked.
“Well then,” the first noble girl snapped. “What are you waiting for?”
“If my lady would care to remove her mask?” the girl suggested.
The noblewoman did it with bad grace, muttering something about rude servants, while the others did the same. They set their masks beside them, like upturned faces, but Sophia was more interested in watching their real features. Some of them were good-looking, some plainer featured but still with the smooth skin that came from expensive lotions and the confidence that came from knowing they could buy half the city if they wanted. Probably only Milady D’Angelica was truly beautiful, though, with features that could have come from one of the paintings adorning the walls, and an air of sharp superiority that said she knew exactly how beautiful she was.
“Get on with it,” she said. “And be careful. I’ve had a very trying day today.”
Presumably not as trying as that of a servant having to wait on her, or as someone risking her freedom trying to sneak into the festivities. Still, Sophia didn’t say anything. Instead, she watched as the serving girl started work with powders and paints, subtly transforming the features of each of the nobles she worked on.
“Work faster!” one of them snapped. “Honestly, these indentured girls are so lazy.”
“That’s not all they are,” another replied. “Did you hear that Henine Watsworth caught one in bed with her fiancé? No morals, any of them.”
“And the way they look,” Angelica added. “You can see the coarseness of their features. I don’t know why we bother to mark them as what they are. You can spot it a mile away anyway.”
They didn’t seem to care that the servant was standing right there, or that she couldn’t talk back because of her position. Sophia hated that cruelty. In fact —
“Excuse me, my lady,” a passing servant asked. “But are you lost?”
It took Sophia a moment to remember that they might mean her. “No, no, I’m fine.”
“Then would you care to go in for your makeup? I’m sure that another chair could be found.”
The last thing Sophia wanted was to have to sit in there with the others, unmasked, where she was sure that someone would guess what she was. Or, more precisely, what she wasn’t.
Sophia heard a snippet of the woman’s thoughts, and it didn’t do anything to reassure her.
Is she all right? I don’t recognize her. Maybe I should —
“Do you think I need such things?” Sophia demanded in her haughtiest voice. “More to the point, do you think I want to be trapped in there with such chatter? Already, I can feel one of my headaches beginning. Go and fetch me water, girl. Go.”
It felt as though she was playing a role in moments like that, the sharpness of it serving like the spikes of a thorn bush to keep people from getting too close. The servant hurried off, and so did Sophia. She couldn’t stand out in the open like that.
Instead, she found a nook where she could hide, pretending to look at the paintings there, listening all the while for the moment when the room beyond would be empty. Sophia didn’t even want to risk the servant seeing her. As the nobles had said, it was too easy to spot one of the indentured.
So she listened with her ears, and with her mind, waiting for the moment when it was quiet, then slipped back into the room with all the caution of a thief. Sophia seated herself in front of the mirrors there, removing her mask and considering the vast array of pigments and powders there.
She realized in that moment that she had no real idea of what to do. She knew what makeup was, she’d even seen a few women wearing it, but it had not been something allowed in the orphanage. The masked sisters would probably have beaten her even for asking about it. Why decorate the face when their goddess had hidden hers from the world? To them, only whores wore such things.
Even so, Sophia tried. She focused on what she thought the women in the paintings had looked like, and grabbed for the most likely-looking powders. It took her less than a minute to realize her mistake, as she went from looking like herself to some kind of demented clown, fit only for the least subtle of street theater.
“Hello?”
Sophia spun at the sound of the servant’s voice, realized what she must look like, and grabbed for her mask. To her surprise, the servant was faster, catching her hand and gently pulling it away.
“No, no, don’t do that. It will make things worse. Let me see, my lady…”
Who is she? I’m sure I know her.
“It will be fine,” Sophia said, standing. It was only as she did so that she realized that she’d let her faint trace of an accent slip. She’d fallen back into her normal voice, and even she could hear how rough and uncultured that sounded compared to the nobles.
“Who are you?” the servant asked. She moved to look at Sophia. “Wait, I know you, don’t I?”
“No, no, you’re mistaken,” Sophia managed. She should have pulled away then. She should have knocked the servant over and run. She didn’t, though.
“Yes I do,” the girl said. “You’re Sophia. I remember you and your sister from the House of the Unclaimed. I’m Cora. I was only a couple of years older than you both, remember?”
Sophia started to shake her head, but the truth was that she did remember the other girl, and at that point, it seemed that there was no point in denying it.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I remember.”
“But what are you doing here?” Cora asked. “Come on, sit down. There must be a story in all of this.”
Sophia had expected her to call for guards there and then, so she sat down almost as much from surprise as anything else. While she sat there, Cora started to wipe away the makeup from her face with expert hands.
Sophia told her what had happened. She told her about running away with her sister, and about sleeping rough in the city. She told her about parting from Kate to try to find happiness and safety in the ways that seemed to make most sense to them.
“And you’re here because you think you can walk in and find a place at court?” Cora asked. Sophia waited for the other girl to tell her how stupid it was. “It might work, I suppose, if you were able to get the right people to become your friends, or more than friends. If you could persuade some nobleman to take you as his mistress… or his wife.”
She laughed at that, as though it were preposterous, but for Sophia, that was the one option that seemed to make the most sense. It was the one option that left her safe. The truth was, though, that she would do what she had to do. She would become some noble’s hanger-on, or friend, or courtesan, if that was what it took.
“So you don’t think it’s stupid?” Sophia asked. “You don’t think it’s an evil thing to try to do?”
“Evil?” Cora countered. “Evil is the fact that they can take us and sell us like chattel, with no real chance to ever repay the debts they say we owe. Evil is the part where noble girls get to treat me like nothing, even though all they do is stand around, waiting for the right husband. You do what you have to do to survive, Sophia. So long as it doesn’t actually hurt someone else, do it and don’t think twice. I wish I’d had the bravery to do what you’re doing.”
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.
