The Alchemists Secret Sample

(The Zero Enigma XII)

Christopher G. Nuttall

Book One: The Zero Blessing
Book Two: The Zero Curse
Book Three: The Zero Equation
Book Four: The Family Shame
Book Five: The Alchemist’s Apprentice
Book Six: The Family Pride
Book Seven: The King’s Man
Book Eight: The Lady Heiress
Book Nine: The Family Name
Book Ten: The Zero Secret
Book Eleven: The Family Secret
Book Twelve: The Alchemist’s Secret

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Cover by Brad Fraunfelter

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Contents
Cover Blurb
Foreword: A Brief Recap
Prologue
Chapter One: Akin
Chapter Two: Rebecca
Chapter Three: Akin
Chapter Four: Rebecca
Chapter Five: Akin
Chapter Six: Rebecca
Chapter Seven: Akin
Chapter Eight: Rebecca
Chapter Nine: Akin

Cover Blurb

For centuries, the Great Houses of Shallot have ruled the city through a complex network of power and influence, dividing and destroying factions that posed a threat to their rule, but the latest crisis may be beyond their power to subvert and defeat. The commoners have finally found a leader, while the aristocrats are deeply divided amongst themselves; their magic no longer trustworthy, their right to rule threatened as never before. As protest marches explode onto the streets, and the guild leaderships are openly challenged, it seems only a matter of time before the entire city catches fire.

In the mansions of North Shallot, Akin Rubén – new to his position as family patriarch – finds himself battling extremists who want to crush the protestors by any means necessary and hampered by his ties to the rebel leader; in the streets of South Shallot and the slums of Water Shallot, Rebecca Travis finds herself dragged into the revolutionary movement and experimenting with potions and spells that will either tip the balance against the aristos once and for all, or lead to all-out war on the streets that will burn the city to the ground …

… And, hidden in the shadows, the real threat is slowly inching into the light.

Foreword: A Brief Recap 

The Thousand-Year Empire dominated the twin continents of Maxima and Minima through two advantages, an unmatched command of magic and the development of Objects of Power, magical weapons and tools that made them seemingly invincible.  But the Empire fell and the secret of making Objects of Power was lost.

Hundreds of years later, a young girl - Caitlyn Aguirre - was born to a powerful magical family.  Caitlyn - Cat - should have been powerful herself, like her two sisters, but she seemed to have no spark of magic at all.  She lacked even a sense for magic.  In desperation, her parents sent her to Jude’s in the hopes that exposure to magical training would bring forth the magic they were sure lay buried within her.  There, she met Isabella and Akin Rubén, children of her family’s greatest enemy.  Isabella became her rival, while she formed a tentative friendship with Akin.

Cat developed no magic, but she discovered something else.  Uniquely, as far as anyone could tell, she had no magic.  At all.  She eventually discovered that a complete lack of magic was necessary for forging Objects of Power.  Far from being useless, her talent made her extremely valuable and utterly irreplaceable.  As far as anyone could tell, Cat was the only true ‘Zero’ known to exist.  This led to her - and her friends, Akin and Rose - being kidnapped, then targeted by Crown Prince Henry and Stregheria Aguirre, Cat’s Great Aunt, when they launched a coup against the Great Houses and the King himself.  Their subversions - which turned Isabella against her family - nearly led to complete disaster ... and perhaps would have, if Cat and Akin hadn’t become friends.

In the aftermath, Cat proposed that she and Akin should be betrothed, creating a marriage bond between their families and making it impossible, at least for the next few years, for the two houses to come to blows.  This was - reluctantly - accepted, with the proviso that either Cat or Akin could refute the agreement if they wished, when they came of age.  Cat left Jude’s to found her own school, where other Zeros - when they were found - would be taught.

Meanwhile, the Great Houses had to deal with the repercussions of the attempted coup and the sudden shift in the balance of power.  Isabella Rubén, condemned as a traitor, was exiled to faraway Kirkhaven Hall, where she discovered a secret her family had sought to bury ... and a new secret, one of her own.  Others took advantage of the chaos to stake a claim to power themselves, plots that were only foiled through sheer luck and outside intervention.  Rebecca Travis, a young half-caste alchemical apprentice, found herself caught in the middle of a plot to seize control of House Bolingbroke, a plot that badly weakened the family even as it was defeated.  The city remained unstable ...

Six years passed, slowly.  Akin Rubén went back to school for his final year, to discover - thanks to his father - that he had to compete in the Challenge, a contest to find the ‘Wizard Regnant.’  Reluctantly, Akin complied, forming a team consisting of his cousin Francis and a handful of misfits, including merchant’s daughter Louise Herdsman and Saline Califon, a distant relative who was under a spell cast by her wicked uncle.  Despite Francis’s betrayal – due to the work of Malachi Rubén, a shadowy figure from the family’s past - Akin managed to realise the true nature of the Challenge and forge a last-minute alliance with Alana Aguirre, Cat’s sister, that allowed them to share the victory.

This did not please everyone, most notably Adam Mortimer.  Disgusted with the Great Houses, and uneasily aware his city was on the brink of exploding into class war, Adam joined the Kingsmen and became instrumental in stopping a plot to use Infernal Devices to trigger the war.  However, he was unable to prevent the plotters from damaging the city’s harmony and far too many innocents wound up paying the price.  

One of them was Lucy Lamplighter, who inherited House Lamplighter after her father was killed in a detonation and discovered, the hard way, that her family was effectively bankrupt.  Embarking on a desperate scheme to rebuild the family fortune, Lucy found herself tangled in a complex web of blackmail spun by Malachi Rubén and was forced to kill him in order to save her life and reputation.

Unknown to Lucy, this accidentally upended plans by Stephen Rubén to break the alliance between House Rubén and House Aguirre.  Discovering that Isabella Rubén had forged a relationship with Callam - the only other known Zero - Stephen mounted a plan to bring her back to Shallot, make her Heir Primus of House Rubén and shatter the alliance once and for all.  Unfortunately for him, Isabella soon realised she didn’t want the post and intended to return to Kirkhaven without delay.  Undaunted, Stephen mounted a coup in a final desperate attempt to stop the alliance.  The coup failed, but claimed the life of Lord Carioca Rubén - Akin and Isabella’s father.  Akin, now Patriarch, took control of the family and promised the alliance would remain intact.

With Cat finally reaching her majority, it seems they could finally get married, but the world intervened. Cat was asked to visit the Eternal City – the former capital of the Thousand-Year Empire – to investigate strange shifts in the ruins, already badly tainted by warped and twisted magic. There, she discovered a near-intact flying city which she was able to repair and return to the skies, then fly back to Shallot. Isabella, in the meantime, returned to Kirkhaven to marry Callam, only to become swept up in a ghostly crisis that destroyed Kirkhaven Town and nearly ruined Kirkhaven Hall, a crisis that had its roots in long-forgotten family history …

… And, back in Shallot, the city is on the brink of a crisis that threatens to tear it apart …

Prologue

“Louise! Louise! Louise!”

Louise Herdsman could hear the noise, the air vibrating with the sound of men – mostly men - shouting her name, as she stood in the antechamber and centred herself. It was the night – the night – when she would learn, beyond a shadow of a doubt, if her quest for reform had found footing, or if the forces of reaction and the aristocracy had managed to undermine her candidacy to the point she sank like a stone in water and never recovered. She had chosen her battleground carefully and called on all of her allies and ingenuity to wage a political campaign that appealed to the voters, yet she was all too aware her enemies were both powerful and numerous. She had calculated that she’d have so many enemies, they would get in each other’s way, which would dissipate the hostile vote amongst their chosen candidates, but she could easily be wrong. The Great Houses hadn’t taken her seriously, when she’d first started to make a name for herself. If they’d changed their mind, if they’d united against her, she could still lose.

The game is rigged, she reminded herself, again. But that doesn’t mean I can’t win.

She took a long breath, using a mirror spell to take a final look at herself. Her blonde hair was loosely tied back, symbolising her commitment to the cause, and her merchant’s dress hung neatly around her, conveying the impression of femininity without doing more than hinting at her curves. She’d chosen her outfit carefully, picking a green dress with a splash of colour rather than the drabness worn by dockside woman or peacock outfits favoured by aristocratic girls. The pendant hanging around her neck was inexpensive and yet it was a reminder her father was a success in his field, and that his success might easily be passed down to his daughter. Her lips quirked in amusement. The dockyard workers were a rough and ready crowd, decent enough – in their own way – and yet crude and rude, even by the standards of the rest of the city. Their nose for bullshit rivalled her father’s. If she pretended to be something she wasn’t, they’d sniff it out and turn their backs on her. And that would be the end.

Her magic sparkled around her, a hint of defensive charms intended to ward off subtle threats. Her opponents were unlikely to risk assassinating her, but there were plenty of other ways they could attempt to discredit her, without turning her into a martyr. Louise had done well at Jude’s – she’d been near the top of the class and would have been right at the top if the grades were calculated fairly – but she was painfully aware that the Great Houses kept some secrets for themselves. A babbling charm, to make her sound like an idiot; a delirium charm, to make her look like a drunken idiot … or worse, far worse. Louise had tested her defences repeatedly, over the last few weeks, but there was still a quiet, nagging doubt. Her enemies might be luring her into overconfidence, while they waited to drop the hammer.

She took a breath, butterflies in her stomach. She had never liked public speaking, even though she had turned out to be good at it. She knew better than to think she was a genius – half of her success had come because she put the people’s grievances into words – and that the slightest mistake could lead to a catastrophic fall, one she would never recover from. Reform would continue somehow, she promised herself as she took another breath. The noise outside was growing louder, but it would start to fade soon. She had to cast the spell while the spellwork was primed, ready to go. Her thoughts reminded her, once again, that there would be no second chance.

Reform will go on, she told herself, again. With or without me, it will go on.

Louise stepped forward and through the curtain, into a blinding world of light and sound. The Dockyard Guildhall was immense, packed to bursting with dockyard workers and a handful of their families, so many people that the guildhall staff had had to turn away a number of obvious outsiders. Some had been curious, but others had clearly been bent on causing trouble … her lips twitched, just for a second, as she forced herself to walk towards the podium. She had chosen the guild for several reasons, including the simple fact that – normally – very few voters could be bothered to turn out for the vote. If her enemies had realised how many workers would attend tonight, they would have found another way to slip ringers and troublemakers into the building. But they hadn’t and they were paying for it now.

Her eyes swept across the crowd, drinking in their adoration. They really were rough and ready men – and a handful of women – quaffing down alcohol as if it were going out of fashion and banging their tankards on the table. She spotted her main rival, the guild representative to Magus Court, and kept her face blank though a lifetime of experience hiding her thoughts from her betters, or at least those who had the advantage of being born into the aristocracy. The man hadn’t learnt his lesson, she thought gleefully. He was a lowborn aristo, a client of a far higher patron, and yet he was dressed as a parody of a dockyard worker, complete with a little cloth cap he clearly didn’t know how to wear. He’d definitely not been spending any time in the drinking halls, she reflected, unable to keep a faint smile from crossing her lips. The songwriters had written a whole ditty about clients trying to impress the voters by pretending to be one of them, aping their styles and wearing their caps … if he’d been drinking with the voters, he would have heard the song and realised they were singing about him. Him, and everyone like him …

But if self-awareness was part of his nature, she told herself, he’d know better.

She kept walking, the crowd pressing in around her. A hand touched her rear … she channelled a kinetic spell into her fist, then punched the groper out without even looking at him. A drunken fool, or a ringer … it didn’t matter. The crowd roared with laughter, cheering loudly. They respected strength and the willingness to fight, not anything that could be taken as weakness. Perhaps it had been a test. If she’d ignored the touch, or screamed for someone to save her, it would have come across poorly. Her reputation would never recover.

Her legs seemed to move of their own accord, as if she were in a dream, as she climbed up the steps and onto the podium. The singer, who had been making up in enthusiasm what he lacked in talent, nodded at her politely and stood back. The guildmaster stepped forward, nodded curtly to her – no soppy aristocratic bows at the guildhall – and turned to face the crowd. Louise could see the sheen on his face, the grim awareness his career was in deep trouble no matter what he did. If he made no attempt to ruin her speech, or come up with an excuse to cancel the election, his patrons would discard him, but if he tried to do anything of the sort openly he’d lose his postion within a day. Louise’s supporters had already made it clear they wanted a fair election, without any dirty tricks … at least from him. If the guildmaster put the interests of his patrons ahead of his guild, in front of an entire crowd, he’d be voted out of office so fast his head would spin.

“Good men and women,” the guildmaster said. There were some chuckles, and snide cat-calling from the shadows. The guildmaster, having more self-awareness than the representative, flushed angrily. He knew he was being mocked, even though he somehow managed to keep his tone level. “I present to you the candidate for office, the honourable Louise Herdsman.”

Louise stepped forward, keeping her face under control. If calling her the honourable anything was the best he could do, when it came to sabotaging her campaign, the election was already in the bag. Perhaps it was … she told herself not to get overconfident as she spoke to the crowd, reminding them of their hard lives, and how little help there was for women and children when their husbands and fathers died, and all the other little indignities they had to swallow. She told them there was hope, that she could be elected to change their lives, and then told them her plan. They were too ruthlessly practical to believe vague promises, no matter how tantalising. They had been burned too many times before, by get-rich-quick schemes that only left them poorer, or promises of reform that had been ruthlessly quashed before they got off the ground. Louise could understand why, because she had studied all of the political movements and why they’d failed. The system could only be beaten by turning its own laws against it.

A thrill ran through her as she finished her speech and clasped her hands behind her back, waiting to see if there would be a rebuttal. Her rival was entitled to make a countervailing speech, if he wished, and perversely he might actually win a few votes if he stepped up in front of a hostile crowd and faced them down. Did he have the nerve? He must know he was unpopular, he knew he’d only held his seat because so few had previously bothered to vote, but … the crowd jeered and booed as her rival shrugged with an ‘I don’t care’ expression on his face. Louise wondered what he was thinking, if he still thought the fix was in or if he was planning a hasty departure before his patrons caught up with him, then shrugged herself. It didn’t matter. The rival – she couldn’t even remember his name – was nothing more than a pawn of the system, a sock puppet moved by a distant hand. It was the system she had to beat, and to beat it she had to join it …

The crowd jostled as lines formed outside the voting booths. Louise risked a glance at the guildmaster and saw the sweat on his face … the fix wasn’t in then, or not enough to make the results certain. There were hundreds of spells around the booths to make it difficult for anyone to cheat, or so she had been told, but there was no way to be sure, no matter how many times she and the other reform-minded magicians tested the charms. She had wondered, despite herself, if the whole guild was nothing more than a sham. It was the only guild in all of Shallot that practiced secret voting, ensuring anyone who voted the wrong way would never be called to account for it, a concession that puzzled her even as she took full advantage of it. Perhaps it was a decoy, a trick to convince the voters the election was fair. Or … sweat poured down her back as the lines of people moved through the booth. Either she won, and walked into Magus Court, or she fell back into the shadows.

There will be another chance, she told herself. It might not be her who rose to challenge the establishment, but someone would. If the Ancients willed it wasn’t her, she would strive to ensure the successful challenger won and reformed the system and … Time is on our side.

The guildmaster looked pale as the staff brought him the results, swallowing hard. Louise knew she’d won, even before the guildmaster forced himself to step up to the podium and announce the results. She wondered if he had the nerve to try to lie, to try to insist the other guy would keep his seat, but … she glanced back and realised her rival had vanished, darting out of the hall when no one was looking. Had he fled to his patrons, to assure them of his total loyalty and usefulness, or had he headed straight to the coachhouse and taken the first available coach out of town? It hardly mattered, she reminded herself. All that mattered was that she’d won.

“The winner is Louise Herdsman,” the guildmaster said. He dropped Louise a deep sardonic bow. She was almost certainly the only other person in the hall who knew the deep bow was a subtle insult, one that could not be called out. Akin’s etiquette lessons had been surprisingly useful, for all she’d thought them a waste of time a few short months ago. “Congratulations, Speaker for the Docks.”

Louise allowed herself a smile as the party broke out, more alcohol and food being passed out as the band started to play. She moved through the crowd, shaking hands and accepting congratulations while trying to duck as many promises as possible. The election had been easy, but the real fight had yet to begin. The guilds might be on her side – she knew many guildsmen agreed with her stance, and her first plan for outright reform – yet the system itself was very definitely not. They might not have taken her seriously – Akin was probably the only senior aristo who knew her, or at least was prepared to admit he did, and understand her commitment to reform – but now they’d have no choice. She had become a threat to the system and that meant its masters would try to discredit, or remove, or kill her …

She smiled. Let them try.

Chapter One: Akin

The day after Cat and Isabella left, I found myself trapped in my father’s office, buried in paperwork.

It felt wrong, really it did, to think of it as my office. It had been my father’s domain, the centre of our family’s power, and Isabella - my sister - and I had never been allowed to enter unless we were in trouble. I’d been granted access when I reached the age of majority as my father’s heir, yet I felt like an intruder every time I stepped through the door. The office had been renovated, after the attempted coup, but I still felt as if I didn’t belong. But then, I was almost painfully young for my position as family patriarch. My father should have lived longer and I should have inherited in my forties. Instead, I was barely nineteen.

I glowered at the paperwork, wondering how my father had coped. There were so many things that couldn’t be trusted to anyone else, certainly not with my father dead, my mother in mourning, and my sister in de facto exile. A sizable number of my relatives had tried to overthrow my father, out of horror at my impending marriage to Cat, and while most of them were dead or gone I had no way to know how many others had been biding their time, waiting to see who won before declaring themselves. It was one thing to accept pledges of allegiance from men old enough to be my father, men who had every reason to resent a teenager being elevated above them, but quite another to accept pledges from people who smiled even as they sharpened their knives for my back. House Rubén was a big family and not everyone had been in the city when all hell broke loose. How many were plotting against me, even now? I didn’t know.

Father knew everything, I reflected. My father had been shown the ropes by his grandfather, who had lived long enough to make sure he was ready to take the helm, and Dad had been granted access to the secret files … I was making it up as I went along, bluffing with bluffs that might – or might not – have been nothing more than absurd flights of fancy. The vast collection of secrets father had used to keep people in line had been destroyed, or lost somewhere in the family archives, and the mere act of looking for it would tip people off that I didn’t have it. Father knew everything but I know nothing.

I raised my head and peered out the window. It was a beautiful summer day, the bright blue sky seeming to merge into the slightly darker blue waters to the south, but I was trapped inside. It was hard not to feel a twinge of resentment for my cousins – they were out there having their seasons, or simply enjoying themselves on the beach, even slumming in Water Shallot – while I was trapped inside, reading paperwork that was so densely written I wasn’t sure if the writers were trying to prove themselves to me or hide important details in mountains of nonsense. Father had taught me to read everything, before I signed it, but there was just so much. I was tempted to recall Isabella, no matter what the rest of the family would say, and ask for her help. There weren’t many others I could trust to have the best interests of the family at heart.

But everyone has the family interests at heart, I told myself. They just think those interests are better served by having someone a little more mature in charge.

I gritted my teeth as I finished reading the document, signed my name, and then looked at the portrait hanging on the far wall. My father had been a cold and hard man, not given to displaying his feelings, but he had loved us. All of us. The portrait was seven years out of date, painted when Isabella and I had been twelve, before we’d gone to Jude’s and … and she’d betrayed us, and been sent into exile. Father should have commissioned a new portrait, a more recent one, but custom would have decreed that Isabella had to be excluded. Instead, he’d kept the one that showed all four of us … my heart twisted, painfully. Perhaps it would be wise to call Isabella back, to share the position with her. People would talk, but who cared? Isabella had grown up a lot, during her years in exile, and I was proud to call her my sister.

There was a sharp knock on the door. I leaned back in my chair and took a long breath, then cast the opening spell. Cousin Penny stepped into the room, showing none of the nervousness I would have expected from someone whose first visit to the office had been after she’d been caught bullying the firsties and severely punished by me. I had no idea what father had said to her – his frosty anger was more terrifying than my mother’s shouting – but it would have been harsh. Any hope she’d had of her family head reversing the punishment had died before it could be expressed, not least because it had been his heir who’d issued it. She had also grown up a lot, at least, in the last year. Plus, she had nowhere else to go.

I sighed, inwardly. I was already thinking like my father. And it was killing me.

Penny smiled at me, her angelic face hiding what I knew to be a calculating – and sometimes cruel – mind. I pitied her future husband, if she ever married. She might have been disgraced, but she was still a Rubén, still quite close to the family head. It was astonishing what someone would overlook, when the potential gains were so high. Isabella had committed de facto treason and people were still asking for her hand in marriage …

“A courier arrived, from House Lamplighter,” Penny said, cheerfully. “Lady Lamplighter requests the pleasure of your company, as soon as possible.”

I raised my eyebrows. House Lamplighter was the weakest of the Great Houses, so weak it was politically insignificant … which made it, to all intents and purposes, neutral ground. Lady Lamplighter, a young woman a year older than I was, had taken full advantage of her house’s neutrality, turning her family manor into a salon where deadly enemies could meet and talk like friends, or balls could be held – and everyone invited – without putting a family manor at risk. She even had ties to the various political parties the Great Houses pretended not to care about, including the organisations that shunned the patron-client relationships that underpinned much of the city. And she was a good friend, insofar as I was allowed to have friends. It helped that she had made it clear she wanted nothing from me.

“That’s odd,” I said. A regular invite would not have come with a courier. “I take it the message is urgent?”

“Yeah.” Penny winked at me. “Do you want me to come with you? You know … just in case.”

I scowled to hide my flush. Cat and I had been betrothed in the aftermath of the House War … we were lucky, in all honesty, that we knew each other. And liked each other. Our relationship had grown closer over the years, through supervised outings and less-supervised forging sessions, and there was no doubt in my mind that I would marry her. But others in my family disagreed. A Rubén, marrying an Aguirre? Unthinkable. I had no doubt, either, that some of them would stop at nothing to stir up trouble, or throw a honeytrap my way. My father’s advice on the subject had been ruthlessly practical. But even he hadn’t been betrothed until he’d been much older than I was right now.

“I’ll be fine,” I said, curtly. Penny’s company was better than it had been, last year, but I could only handle her in small doses. “I’ll walk over there. I need the exercise.”

Penny looked suitably shocked as we left the office, sealing the wards behind us, and walked down to the entrance hall. The damage from the coup was still being repaired, the staff putting the finishing touches on repair work that was half-hidden under the mourning banners … I hated myself for thinking it, but my father’s death meant we couldn’t hold any more balls or celebrations until the next season, ten months away.  It was something of a relief. I had never liked formal balls, or dinners, and it would be worse, now that I was the family patriarch. Hopefully, Cat and I would be married before I had to start holding them again and we could share the burden. Or at least moan to each other about how tedious they were.

I pulled my cloak over my suit, made a show of checking my appearance in the mirror, then walked out and down the path to the gates. They opened at my approach, a reminder the family wards had accepted me as their new master … a reminder, too, that my father was dead. The armsman outside the gate hastily jumped to attention, hiding a broadsheet he’d been reading with practiced speed, and saluted. I returned the salute, pretending not to notice the newspaper. We were the most powerful family in the city and we didn’t need to keep a man on guard, not when we had more subtle defences on the inner side of the wall. But we had to keep up appearances. If our rivals saw us looking weak, they’d start plotting against us.

The air was warm and welcoming, the blue sky relaxing me as I walked past manor after manor, each surrounded by deeply rooted family wards. A handful of aristocrats passed me on the streets, men bowing politely and women dropping curtseys … I pretended not to see the children running past, or the servants trying to stay out of sight. The latter was an important part of aristocratic etiquette, I’d been told; the polite thing to do was to pretend that servants simply didn’t exist, even though everyone knew they did. But then, it was surprisingly easy to pretend otherwise. Servants were rarely seen in the manor unless they were called. 

I felt myself calm down, just a little, as I neared the edge of North Shallot. The manors here were smaller, although smaller was a relative term when dealing with aristocratic mansions, and a handful even belonged to wealthy merchants, who had worked their way up the social ladder through a combination of profit-seeking and careful patronage. They were still shunned by the Grande Dames, who resented anyone who entered their territory without being able to trace their bloodline back hundreds of years, but their children would be low-ranking aristocrats and their grandchildren would be equals … sort of. I smiled as a trio of teenage girls walked past me, wearing trousers … six months ago, any young woman who wore pants would be subject to the most astringent criticism, but now everyone who wanted to make a statement wore them. Isabella had done that, wearing them when attending a ball and daring the old ladies to make a fuss. I wasn’t sure if she’d been thinking of sheer practicality, or if it was a subtle revenge scheme, but it hardly mattered. The Grande Dames had spent so much time preparing for Isabella’s return to High Society that they could hardly turn on a wheel and dismiss her contributions to fashion or penalise anyone else who followed in her footsteps. The looks on their faces had made it all worthwhile. They had looked ready to faint …

The thought made me smile as I reached House Lamplighter and stepped through the permanently open gates. The garden had looked unkempt for a long time – Lady Lamplighter’s father had fritted away the family fortune, rather than keeping his property in good condition – but she’d made a virtue out of a vice, by crafting her garden into a strange combination of plants and trees that provided all sorts of quiet meeting places for couples who preferred not to be watched as they courted. A handful of youngsters swanned about outside the ballroom windows, pretending to be languid in a manner a little too intense to be convincing. I doubted they had anything else to do with their time. They were too high-born to work in trade, at least not unless they were allowed to enter at a very senior level, and too low-ranking to be entrusted with any real responsibilities. My father had called them lazy morons – when he’d been in a good mood – and yet, I couldn’t help feeling a twinge of envy. They could sit around all day, making a show of doing nothing. I could not.

I walked into the ballroom and up the stairs to the first floor, the wards crawling oddly around me. The ground floor was open to all, a strange combination of ballroom and dining room and private shop, and the first floor was for the guests – men and women of distinction who could be relied upon to liven up parties, in exchange for bread and board – but the upper levels were private, carefully warded to give Lady Lamplighter and her remaining family a little privacy. The lower levels were neatly decorated with artworks from all over the city – all put on display for free, to showcase various artists to aristos who might patronise them in both senses of the word – but the higher levels were surprisingly bare. House Lamplighter might be crawling its way back up, yet it was still dangerously poor. I didn’t envy Lady Lamplighter. In her place, I might have thought about leaving the family behind instead of accepting an inheritance that would be more of a burden than a blessing.

Lucy Lamplighter herself greeted me as I reached the second floor, dropping a polite curtsy. I bowed in return, offering her more honour than she – technically – deserved. The Grande Dames would have had a fit, if they’d seen me. I didn’t care. I’d spent the last few weeks wrestling with my family’s affairs and I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Lucy’s job had been a great deal harder. I didn’t know how she’d done it, but she had. I almost wished I could hire her to take my place. That would really shock the Grande Dames.

“Akin,” Lucy said. Her voice was slightly accented, a reminder that she’d gone to Grayling’s Academy for Young Ladies rather than Jude’s. There were all sorts of rumours about that school, and the young girls who went there to be turned into ladies, but none seemed anything more than the sort of absurd nonsense languid young men made up to pass the time. Lucy was surprisingly normal, compared to some of the characters I’d met at Jude’s. “Thank you for coming.”

I studied her, thoughtfully. Lucy’s skin was tanned, her dark hair fanning out around darker eyes and spilling over a red dress that was a strange mixture of aristocratic and commoner influences. It made her look strikingly exotic and my eyes lingered a little longer than they should, before I forced myself to look away. Her dress was a deliberate message, I suspected. Her betrothed was a commoner, something that would have surprised High Society if it hadn’t long since given up being shocked by her. It intrigued me that she’d kept the betrothal – her father had arranged it without asking her, let alone securing her consent – but I could hardly blame her for accepting it. My betrothal had turned into a love match too.

“I thought it was urgent,” I said, as she turned to lead me into her office. Or one of them. My father had had three offices; one for meetings, one for meetings with important people, and one where he actually worked. There were times when I wondered if he had a fourth office, one hidden from everyone else … it wasn’t impossible. The mansion was so large, with so many wings, that an entire floor could be concealed, if one controlled the wards. “And I needed a break.”

Lucy shot me a sympathetic look, full of understanding. I knew she understood. It was unlikely she’d had as much paperwork to handle as I did, but her family finances had been in shambles and the slightest mistake could have ruined her. Would have, probably. I almost envied her. My family was just biding its time, waiting for me to mess up, while hers had let her get on with it. But then, they’d known they were in deep trouble …

“Akin,” a quiet voice said. I blinked as I saw Alana sitting in the office. “Nice to see you again.”

I kept my surprise concealed. Alana – Cat’s sister – and I were hardly friends, but we had worked together as Head Boy and Girl and would have to at least tolerate each other in the future, when we became in-laws. She was tall, her skin barely a shade lighter than the night, with long dark hair hanging down to the small of her back. She was the most competitive person I knew, which put her up against some very tough competition. Even Cousin Francis hadn’t been as ambitious as she was … 

“I suppose you’re wondering why I called you here,” Lucy said, after Alana and I exchanged respects. “I have been asked to set up a meeting, at very short notice, with an old friend of yours.”

My eyes narrowed. I didn’t have many friends, and those I had could contact me directly. It wasn’t as if I would turn them away, even now. My armsmen had standing orders to let any of my friends in whenever they arrived and allow them to wait in the sitting room for me. Why would they go to the trouble of asking Lucy to arrange a meeting …

… And then I knew.

“Louise,” I said. “Right?”

“Yes,” Lucy said. “She’s on her way now.”

Alana snorted. “And you think we should listen to her?”

“Yes,” Lucy told her. “I really think you should.”

Chapter Two: Rebecca

I felt a thrill, right through my entire body, as the potion I’d been working on shimmered into its final form.

The magic sparkled for a moment longer, then faded away. The potion – a multicoloured liquid that defied description – cooled rapidly, allowing me to bottle it up and seal the lid before the magic could start to evaporate. I’d brewed it on commission, with the promise of a hefty profit if it actually worked, and I didn’t want to take chances. If the guild had accepted me as a member, I might have had a degree of protection if the potion failed, despite my best efforts, but it hadn’t and I didn’t. The results would be difficult to deny, if the potion worked, yet … I gritted my teeth. There was just no way to be sure.

I sealed the lid with wax, then muttered a charm to put the potion into stasis and labelled it carefully. I hoped – prayed, to ancestors I’d never known – that the details my client had given me were accurate, that he or his wife hadn’t messed up the process by supplying me with the wrong information. Conceptive potion was always tricky, and had to be carefully brewed to match the user’s details, and the slightest mistake could render the brew worse than useless. The fact the client had come to me, rather than a certified Master Brewer, was worrying. It suggested whoever was taking the potion wanted to remain unknown, which meant their agent might try to stiff me on the bill.

But I do have his advance, and the money he paid for the ingredients, I thought. And he’ll have to pay the rest before I let him take the potion and run.

I sighed inwardly as I stepped back and headed to the washbasin. The aristos didn’t understand how expensive even basic ingredients were, if the alchemist didn’t have ties to the guild or the aristocracy. House Bolingbroke had given me some help, in the early days, but there were limits to their generosity, particularly as I’d refused to be one of their clients. I couldn’t afford to take a loss, which meant I had to demand payment up front for anything more complex than a very simple potion, and that ensured my clientele was more limited than I would have preferred. But I had no choice. The guild had refused to certify me, at least until I proved my potion innovations worked, and … that meant I couldn’t draw on the guild’s resources. It just wasn’t fair.

My hands itched unpleasantly as I washed them clean, then carefully removed my apron and washed my hands again. I’d experimented with gloves, back when I’d started, but I’d rapidly discovered my old master’s warnings about how gloves impeded brewing had been, if anything, understated. There were limits to how much magic you could work through the gloves, or how precise you could be, and anything more complex than a simple brew would be almost impossible to produce unless you had bare hands. My skin, tanned slightly because of my unknown father, was already stained, no matter how much I washed them. No one would mistake me for anything but a potioneer. I was luckier than some – Lady Aguirre bore the scars of countless potions experiments that had produced nothing apart from explosions – yet it was just a matter of time until I got hurt too. It was one thing to brew a recipe everyone knew, where all the kinks had been worked out years ago, but quite another to experiment with something wholly new.

I picked up the tray and checked my appearance in the mirror, trying not to roll my eyes at the thought. There was no law that stated I had to wear an alchemist’s outfit, or keep my long hair tied back, or anything else that suited the secret masters of fashion, but customers preferred to see their alchemists looking the part. Being a half-caste was already one strike against me – my father’s ancestors were a mystery, preventing me from honouring them as they deserved – and there was no point in alienating my clients, no matter how absurd the dictates of fashion seemed. There was no way I’d wear my real apron in the shop. It might have been stained – they expected me to wear a stained apron – but the stains still carried a little charge, something that could be dangerous if I got very unlucky. There was no point in taking chances, not when there was no need. My fake apron would do the trick quite well, and no one would notice the difference.

I snorted as I studied myself. My long dark hair – I’d declined to cut it short, even though I probably should – was tied back in a neat little ponytail, my tanned skin and almond eyes were a tart reminder of my mystery father … I gritted my teeth as I brushed down my shirt and pants, then tied the apron into place, picked up the bottle and walked down to the shop. It was quiet, but it always was shortly before lunchtime. The streets outside were surprisingly quiet too. Normally, there were always a few matrons on the prowl for bargains before lunch hour sent everyone else onto the streets.

My heart swelled with pride as I reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped through the curtain into the shop. It was mine – ours, rather – the air heavy with the smell of potions I’d brewed and charms I’d cast myself, to protect me and mine from the outside world. The shop was neat and simple, with a long wooden counter and a display cabinet and, behind the counter, row upon row of potion bottles and vials, all sealed and neatly labelled as they waited for customers. A handful of simple ingredients rested in the cabinet, waiting too, although we rarely made any money from selling them. There was little point in trying to compete with the wholesalers who could afford to buy in bulk. The only reason we put them on sale was because some of our customers liked to experiment, often after chatting with us about possible results. I wasn’t good at making small talk, but potions? I could talk for hours about those.

Jill looked up from behind the counter and smiled, her blonde hair glowing in the lamplight. I felt a rush of affection and carefully put the bottle down on the desk, before walking up to my girlfriend and giving her a kiss. Jill returned the kiss, without even bothering to check if there was anyone outside peering in. I felt my grin widen as the kiss deepened. Most people wouldn’t give a damn if two young women were kissing, but they tended to get a little unnerved if they saw a pair of alchemists doing it. It was dangerous, to say the least, to get distracted in the middle of a brewing session. It certainly didn’t inspire confidence in one’s brewing skills.

I stepped back. “How’s business?”

“We had the morning rush, the mid-morning rush, and now it’s quiet,” Jill said, indicating the newspaper beside the cash register. I didn’t fault her for reading when she was supposed to be minding the till. I’d done the same, when I’d been Master Travis’s shopgirl and de facto apprentice. There were periods when the shop would be jam-packed with customers – standing room only – and periods of utter boredom, where there was nothing to do once you’d brought up the replacement vials from the ironhold and counted the cash for the third time. “It’ll start again soon.”

“Yeah.” I carefully wrote out a label for the potion, stuck it onto the bottle with a simple charm, and then put it behind the counter for the customer – or, more likely, his agent. I wondered idly who had sent him to me – an aristo, probably, one who didn’t want their peers to know they were having problems conceiving children – and then dismissed the thought. I didn’t want to know. No alchemist could survive having a reputation for asking the wrong questions, a painful problem when there were questions you simply had to ask. “Anything interesting in this morning’s paper?”

“Ghosts,” Jill said. “Down in the cemetery, ghosts.”

I gave her an odd look. Jill had always preferred the more sensationalistic papers, although it was never easy to tell which stories were only slightly exaggerated and which were made up of whole cloth. I was entirely sure the Duchess of Gloucester hadn’t given birth to twin goblins and Lady White’s chocolate chastity belt, while slightly more believable, was still highly dubious. It sounded more like a sick joke, rather than anything rooted in a grain of truth. I had heard rumours that some of the Great Houses put their daughters in chastity belts, but I was fairly sure it wasn’t true. I’d certainly never seen any during my time at House Bolingbroke.

But then, you were hardly a lady’s maid, I reminded myself. You never saw what they wore under their dresses.

I shrugged and looked at her. “What does it say?”

“There was a gang of kids sneaking into the cemetery at night,” Jill said, holding up the paper. “They were chased out again, apparently by ghosts. Most suffered some form of severe magic depletion, which is what makes this story different from all the others. Their parents are up in arms.”

“Are they going to wage war on the netherworld,” I asked sardonically, “or do they think the ghosts concealed a more mundane threat?”

Jill snorted. “Not if you believe the paper.”

She straightened up as the doorbell rang and a customer stepped into the shop. I felt another rush of affection as Jill smiled at the newcomer, then stepped back to let her work her magic. Jill wore the same shopgirl’s outfit I’d worn, six years ago, but on her it looked good. I tried not to stare at her bodice too long, not when I had too much brewing to do after lunch. The idea of closing the shop to have some private fun was very tempting, but I couldn’t afford to take much time off. I supposed it was the downside of working for myself. When I told my boss I was sick, I knew I was lying.

I smiled, then smoothed my smile into a professional mask as the door opened again, revealing the agent. I didn’t know the man’s name – he wore a cloak that covered his body, carefully charmed to hide both his face and his livery – but there was no mistaking him. I wondered if he thought he was fooling anyone with that garb – there was no point in engaging in cloak and dagger shenanigans when you were wearing a literal cloak and probably carrying a dagger – then decided it was part of the act. He could nip into an alleyway, take off the cloak, and vanish into the crowd, just another client in his patron’s livery, no more noticeable than a messenger boy running from place to place as if the hounds of the netherworlds were after him. 

“Madame Alchemist,” the agent said. His voice was so flat I knew he was using magic to modulate his tone, suggesting he thought I’d recognise it. “Do you have the potion?”

“Yes.” I picked up the bottle, then the advice leaflet I’d printed earlier. I’d always found it better to do the leaflet first – it helped focus the mind – and then reread it after the brewing was completed, just to be sure the advice was correct. I scanned it quickly, just to be sure, then handed the two over. “Make sure your master and mistress read the leaflet carefully, before they start.”

The agent nodded, then dropped a handful of coins on the counter and hurried out without waiting for change. That was unusual. Aristos tended to be insulted when one offered them change, but their agents weren’t normally so spendthrift. Nor were most of my customers, save for men who had to buy menstrual potions for their wives. The way they ran in and out, you’d think they were buying something illegal. Really illegal. Honestly. It was a natural bodily function. There were worse things one could have, and not all could be treated with potions. 

“The money’s good,” Jill said. She sounded surprised, as she rang up the coins and dropped them in the cash register. “Odd, don’t you think?”

I shrugged. The merchants of Shallot were a diverse lot, selling everything under the sun and a few things that were only discussed in the shadows, but they all agreed on one thing. The counterfeiter must die. It was difficult, and practically impossible, to forge coins, yet … it had been known to happen. But everyone would unite to hunt the forger down, once the forgeries were discovered. And they would be. No one remained a merchant in South Shallot by being trusting.

A couple more customers entered, and I sat back to read the paper as Jill handled them one by one. The graveyard story was as sensational as I had expected, although there were some details I wouldn’t have expected in a made-up story. Ghosts weren’t exactly uncommon outside the city, but it was quite rare to see them within the city limits, even in a graveyard. I wasn’t sure why. Most people believed ghosts were the lingering remains of powerful magicians, the last of their power fading slowly into the ether, but a handful believed they were manifestations from the netherworld. I had no opinion. My ancestors wouldn’t want anything to do with me. I hadn’t kept their memory alive.

My eyes darted down the page, noting a handful of other odd stories. A couple of potioneers who’d had odd results, a forgery that had caught fire for no apparent reason, an incident at House Greenfield that had been covered up, although not very well if the newspaper could report that something had happened even if it didn’t know what. I was surprised the aristos hadn’t managed to have the story quashed, unless they’d thought that trying would draw more attention to the newspaper. Perhaps it had been planted, or it was nothing more than mindless rumourmongering. Either was possible …

“You’ll be coming to the march, after lunch?”

I looked up. The last of the customers had gone, leaving us alone again. Jill was sitting on the counter, her eyes suddenly serious. “Will you?”

I felt myself flush and was grateful my skin kept it from showing. The march … I’d forgotten about the march. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go, not when I had ties to House Bolingbrook. It wasn’t fair, or right, that you needed patronage to get onto the ladder, but … losing that patronage would hurt, even now. My business was solidly established, perhaps, yet I knew nothing was certain. Quite a few businesses had been on top of the world one week, facing heavy competition the next, and gone the third, so completely forgotten that hardly anyone bothered to remember their names. I had no idea who had owned the apothecary, before me, but they clearly hadn’t known how to run a business. Or they’d been unable to compete when the world changed.

“It’s important,” Jill reminded me. “If the motion is passed …”

I nodded, tartly. I didn’t like politics, but I knew better than to pretend politics didn’t matter. I wanted – needed – to join the Alchemist’s Guild and, if I was going to play any role within the guild, I needed to understand how it worked. I was already a member of the Shopkeeper’s Guild – there was no rule against being in two guilds, as long as you met the basic requirements – but there was little point in trying to work my way to the top, or even into a position of some influence, unless I became a client. There were too many other shopkeepers in the guild, including quite a few who were only shopkeepers because they owned the shops and hired staff to do all the work. Personally, I thought anyone who didn’t do the work shouldn’t be allowed a vote, but no one cared about my opinion.

“I understand,” I said. Jill wasn’t easy to pick out in a crowd, even if she was – in my opinion – stunningly beautiful. She was just another blonde blue-eyed shopgirl, in a city where blonde hair was extremely common. Blonde hair and blue eyes … were we talking about a commoner or a Rubén? Jill could pass for one, in the right outfit, as long as she didn’t open her mouth. But if I were spotted … I shrugged mentally and took the plunge. “I’ll come.”

Jill grinned and kissed me. I kissed her back, then let go as the bells started to ring … lunch hour for everyone but shopkeepers like us. We took our lunch afterwards, if we weren’t surrounded by customers. The bigger shops could afford to have a rota, to make sure everyone got a chance to eat and take a break, but I couldn’t afford to hire a second shopgirl. It would have broken the bank. 

“Make sure you’re wearing your best,” Jill teased. “Everyone else will be going too.”

“I’ll see what I can find,” I said. The march had been planned in advance, and everyone had been cautioned to dress as if they were going to meet their prospective in-laws, but … I didn’t like dressing up. “Are you going to wear that blue dress of yours?”

Jill flushed. I loved it when she blushed. It suited her.

“Yeah,” she said. “And afterwards …”

She broke off as another customer entered. I nodded and headed back to my workshop. I should just have enough time to brew a final potion, before I had to shower and get dressed. And then …?

I didn’t think the march would bring change, but who knew? If we all worked together …

Yeah, my thoughts mocked. If.

Chapter Three: Akin

Louise and I had never been friends, not in any real sense of the word, but I had respected her.

It hadn’t been easy, and if we hadn’t been forced to work together it was possible we would never have shared more than a nodding acquaintance. She was a merchant’s daughter with a genuine talent for magic, a remarkable skill for learning and combining what she’d learnt into newer and better spells, and a burning passion for social justice. She chafed under the aristocratic system, the need for a commoner to have a patron if they wanted to advance, and I couldn’t blame her. She had once likened it to prostitution and, while I had been horrified at the time, she had a point. I’d learnt too much about too many aristocrats abusing their power to feel otherwise, even though I still believed in the system. It let the talented rise, without threatening the system itself.

But that rise comes at a price, I reminded myself. My father’s clients had fawned on him – and now me -  in a manner I found rather embarrassing. It was the price of their posts. They had to laugh at my jokes, back me even when they thought I was being an ass … they weren’t allowed, even, to tell me when I was being an ass. And if they decide they want to stop playing, they don’t get to keep what they had …

I sighed inwardly. I had tried to help Louise, trading lessons in etiquette for her assistance in winning the contest to become Wizard Regnant, but I feared I might only have made matters worse. Louise burned with resentment, all the more so after she’d been denied the valedictory post she’d deserved, and I was sure she had turned her formidable intellect to the task of challenging the system, of tearing it down and rebuilding it. She had …

Alana leaned forward. “She was elected to Magus Court, wasn’t she?”

“Yes,” Lucy said. “She won the special election.”

I kicked myself mentally, even as I pretended I knew what they were talking about. I’d heard about the election, and how the dark horse candidate had won, but it had come when I’d been trying to rebuild the family after the coup. Louise might have been an acquaintance, and I wished her well, yet her exploits had been unimportant compared to the task of pulling the family back together before our enemies could take advantage of our disunity. 

“Charming,” Alana said. She knew Louise too, although I doubted their relationship was on a first-name basis, and she knew how clever Louise could be. “What happened?”

“The guild got overconfident,” Lucy said. “More accurately, their representative got overconfident. He didn’t make a show of doing his best for his voters, so when Louise threw her cap into the ring – perhaps literally – they turned on him. And by the time he realised he was fighting for his political life, it was already too late.”

“Idiot,” Alana said, dismissively.

I supposed she was right. The patron-client system might be the foundation of the entire city – you simply couldn’t go very far, unless you had a patron – but there were limits. A guild representative who failed to deliver what his voters wanted, who didn’t even manage to make a show of trying to deliver, would be hopelessly vulnerable once opposition got organised, no matter how much money and patronage was splashed out … hell, his patrons had probably cut the funding once they realised he was doomed. No point in throwing good money after bad … I wondered, suddenly, if he was one of my clients. It wasn’t impossible. There were so many, and I was so overworked, that quite a few names and faces had gone through one ear and out the other, without my taking any real notice. No … if he were, Alana would have said something. She had a mind like a steel trap, and a certain willingness to embarrass anyone who might prove to be a rival. If we hadn’t been forced to work together, we would be enemies.

“Yes,” Lucy agreed, flatly. “But he lost, and now Louise has his seat.”

“One seat,” I pointed out. “That leaves ninety-nine to go.”

Lucy met my eyes. “You really should listen to her,” she said, cocking her head in a manner that suggested she was communing with the wards. “This is important.”

“Very well,” Alana said. “We’ll hear her out, and then we’ll throw her out.”

I tried not to wince at the look that flitted across Lucy’s face, so quickly I would have missed it if I hadn’t been looking at her. Alana was a guest in Lamplighter Hall, and she was her father’s heir rather than her family’s matriarch, but she was still incredibly powerful, powerful enough to speak to Lucy as if she were sitting in Aguirre Hall, rather than Lucy’s mansion. It was Lucy who decided who was allowed to visit, and what sort of conduct was tolerated, and who would be kicked out if they failed to comport themselves as guests. Alana had no right to suggest otherwise. If she found Louise’s presence intolerable, she was free to leave.

“Be polite,” I said. “She is a representative.”

Alana shot me a sharp look, then shrugged and settled back into her chair.

The door opened. I stood and bowed politely as Louise stepped into the room. She had always been striking, rather than attractive, with long blonde hair that was so pale it was almost white and a severe face that was only mildly softened by blue eyes and a pair of oversized glasses that seemed designed to divert attention from her face. She looked … it struck me, suddenly, that she looked older than the rest of us, even though we were the same age. She had practically been born old.

“My Lady,” I said. She was technically entitled to the honorific, as a representative, although I suspected I was the first one to give it to her. “It is good to see you again.”

Louise nodded, then surprised me by dropping a simple yet elegant curtsey. It wasn't one I’d shown her. I wondered, idly, who’d taught her, and why. She wore a simple merchant’s dress, her chain of office hanging around her neck, rather than Magus Court robes … I had no idea if she had come incognito, or if she simply detested the robes. I could hardly blame her, if so. The standard design made their wearers look like walking blancmanges, although they did encourage a certain sense of equality. The dress suited her better, I thought. It was carefully tailored to draw attention to her face and away from her chest, without making it obvious.

“You are welcome here,” Lucy said, indicating a chair. “Please. Be seated. Would you care for some refreshment?”

“No, thank you,” Louise said. Her voice was softer than I remembered, but had a hint of underlying steel that reminded me – again – that she had a backbone. “I won’t take up much of your time.”

“That’s good to hear,” Alana said, in a tone that would probably have earned her a slap from her mother. It was precisely one degree warmer than the level Louse – or anyone – could reasonably take offence, conveying a disdain Louise would have to be deaf or dumb to miss. “We have some important work to do elsewhere.”

Louise showed no visible offense, although I knew her well enough to be sure she was boiling inside. “I’ll keep this quick, then,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to keep you from the ballroom floor for any longer than strictly necessary.”

“Your consideration warms my heart,” Alana said, not quite sneering. I could tell she’d taken offense. She was the Heir Primus. She couldn’t afford to waste her years gallivanting around the dance floor, not when she needed to learn the ropes before her father passed away. Her father was already entrusting her with more responsibility, rather than letting her waste her life until she found herself thrown into the deep end, swimming with the sharks. I envied her. “It is good that you …”

I cleared my throat. “If time is pressing, can I suggest we abandon the formalities? We don’t have to waste hours on pointless repartee, if we do not wish to.”

Louise nodded, curtly. “I’ll get right to the point,” she said. “I intend to introduce a bill mandating secret ballots for guild elections, all elections.  And I would like you three to support it,”

Alana hissed. “Out of the question.”

I kept my face blank, somehow. The voting was public, almost always. How else could you be sure your clients voted the way you wanted them to, putting your preferred candidates into office, rather than voting for the wrong person? It was unthinkable that the Great Houses would allow their clients so much freedom, certainly not as the default. Sure, there were times when clients were released to vote their own consciences, but those were incredibly rare and most clients preferred to abstain, rather than risk alienating their patrons. Louise was insane, if she thought her bill would even make it out of committee. The remainder of Magus Court would unite against her. Every man jack of them would oppose the bill …

… Or would they?

I forced myself to think, fast. The bill would be incredibly unpopular with the Great Houses and their clients, but it would be very popular with everyone else. Guild elections were often little more than a formality, where the results were predetermined in advance … because anyone who voted against the winner would be known, and would be punished, when the election was completed. There were very few who’d dare to break ranks, certainly not enough to change the outcome. But if the ballot was secret, if no one knew who’d voted for who … my heart sank. The representatives would have very real trouble keeping their voters from tossing them out, if they refused to allow the bill to pass. And there was very little we could do to prevent it.

Alana’s face, so similar to Cat’s and yet so different, tightened. “Do you really think the bill will pass?”

“It will, with your support,” Louise said. “And you really should support it.”

I leaned forward, feeling my blood run cold. Louise burned with passion, but she wasn’t given to impractical dreaming. She had concocted a scheme to get herself and elected and won … I refused to believe she didn’t have something in mind to make sure her bill became public and was debated in open chamber. My eyes narrowed … was that the plan? Magus Court’s debates were normally ill-attended, and the only watchers were people who wanted to be lulled to sleep, but a bill as important as this one would draw interest from all walks of life. Was Louise counting on us having problems justifying our opposition, if we spoke openly against it? It would be hard to pretend our motives were good, by any reasonable standards, if we had to say the quiet part out loud. Was she counting on it?

My lips were suddenly dry. I forced myself to speak. “Why?”

Louise met my eyes. She wasn’t the most attractive girl in the world, certainly not when compared to Cat or Alana or even Lucy, but there was a fire in her gaze that burned brightly, calling to me even though I knew it would burn me if we touched. Perhaps literally. I hadn’t heard her name connected with anyone, and she’d never struck me as being particularly interested in romantic relationships, but … I shook my head. That thought was going nowhere good.

“The city is starting to boil over,” Louise said, quietly. “Resentment of the Great Houses – at the aristocracy – is at a fever pitch. There is no denying, now, that the infernal devices were laid by aristos trying to discredit the various protest movements, killing or maiming hundreds to silence us … this time, we will not be silenced. Change is coming, whether you like it or not. The only question, My Lord, is if you will work with us to manage the change, or be destroyed when the resentment finally explodes.”

Alana bristled. “And what does resentment matter, when our spells could freeze your protestors in their tracks and our armsmen simply lop off their heads before they can recover? I could snap my fingers, right now, and turn you into a toad. What would you say to that?”

I winced. It was unclear which of the two girls was really better at magic. Alana was talented, and she’d had training from birth, but Louise was smart and she’d spent hours in the library, fighting desperately to catch up with her peers. It had worked too, by and large. No one would take her lightly, even Alana. She might even have been the real valedictorian. It was hard to say for sure. Everyone knew the system was rigged. Alana and I wouldn’t have become Head Boy and Girl if it hadn’t been.

Probably, I reflected. But who knows for sure?

Louise smiled. “Remind me,” she said. “What happened at your coming-out?”

Alana’s fists clenched. “And how do you know about that?”

Lucy made a sound that suggested she was trying not to laugh. Alana glowered at her, then back at Louise. The disaster at Aguirre Hall hadn’t been hushed up … no one, not even Lord Aguirre himself, could have hoped to keep word from getting out. Too many people who’d been there had an interest in telling the entire world, from high-ranking aristos who were technically his enemies to low-ranking aristos and commoners who needed to make money and didn’t care what they had to do to get it. Blabbing to the newspapers was one step below prostitution, if you asked me, but it did have the great advantage of not requiring bodily contact. There were too many aristos who had nothing but their names, these days, pushing their children to marry merchants …

“It was the first noticeable incident, but there have been others,” Louise said. “The magic is nowhere near as reliable as it was.”

Her lips twisted into an expression no one would mistake for a friendly smile. “So my answer to your question is” – she put on the lowest of lower-class accents – “come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough.”

“Not here,” Lucy said, quickly.

Alana gathered herself. “No one is disputing that you are a great magician,” she said, in a tone that conveyed the exact opposite. “But there is only one of you. Most magicians are aristocrats, or have aristocratic patrons. What do you say to that?”

Louise made a show of checking her watch, then stood and walked to the window. “Come and look at this?”

I frowned, exchanging glances with Alana as we followed her. Lucy’s office overlooked the main road running from the North Bridge through North Shallot and all the way down to the South Bridge. It had puzzled me, the first time I’d visited her office, although I suspected she’d chosen the chamber because it let her see the mansions, rather than South or Water Shallot. It was the closest she could get to a sea view. And …

My heart twisted as I saw the marchers, making their way over the bridge and into North Shallot. There were hundreds – no, thousands; perhaps even hundreds of thousands – of people, clad in their best outfits as they marched past, waving banners with Louise’s face and signs demanding SECRET BALLOT NOW! I sucked in my breath as I spotted a number of young children, girls and boys, on the edge of the crowd. They looked as if they were heading for a day at the beach.

Alana turned to look at Louise. “That’s an illegal gathering!”

Louise looked back at her, evenly. “Are you going to arrest the whole city?”

I said nothing. The guards on the bridge, who should have turned the marchers back, were nowhere to be seen. I suspected – I hoped – they’d taken one look at the crowd and decided that discretion was the better part of valour.  They’d be in deep shit afterwards, when the aristocracy started demanding answers, and they’d probably be fired … but better fired than torn apart by an angry crowd. The armsmen on various gates stared at the crowd, seemingly unwilling to do anything they didn’t have to. I didn’t blame them either. The marchers weren’t trying to break into the mansions. They were just making a show of strength.

Louise spoke, from behind me. “There will be change, like it or not,” she said. I didn’t look at her. I was too busy watching the crowd. The people looked friendly enough, I supposed, but that could change in a heartbeat. I wondered why our agents hadn’t warned us. There were supposed to be spies in the reform movement. “The only question, My Lord and Ladies, is if you will midwife its birth, and in doing so survive, or if you will stand in its way and get crushed.”

I turned to face her. “Do you think they” – I nodded towards the distant mansions – “take well to being pushed around?”

“I don’t know,” Louise said, artfully. “How do you think we felt about it?”

Her gaze sharpened. “Stings, doesn’t it?”

She nodded to Lucy. “I’ll be in touch,” she added. “Thank you for arranging this meeting. I’ll show myself out.”

I watched her go, feeling cold. The last protest movement had come apart at the seams. This one … I suspected it would last longer than its predecessor, perhaps long enough to force real and lasting change. And yet, the Great Houses would not concede anything under pressure. I knew that for a fact.

“This will not stand,” Alana said. I knew she spoke for the entire aristocracy, save myself. “It will not.”

Chapter Four: Rebecca

I heard the crowd a long time before it came into view.

It wasn’t the first protest march I’d seen, or attended, but there was an air of … something warm and friendly about it that was different, very different, from the other marches in the past, the ones that had ended in blood and death and horror on an unthinkable scale. The crowd was mixed – appendices and shopkeepers rubbing shoulders with craftsmen and coachmen and dockyard workers – yet everyone seemed united, dressed in their best as they prepared to march. Stewards hurried around, clearly visible in bright red shirts, ordering people into lines and handing out banners and signs, some simply labelled REFORM and others demanding more concrete changes. A white-haired man was standing by the edge of the gathering, holding a placard that read DOWN WITH THIS SORT OF THING. I wanted to ask what he meant, but he was swept away by the crowd before I could make my way over to him. A stream of children ran past, laughing at the thought of taking an afternoon off school. I hoped, grimly, that there’d be no violence. They would be hopelessly vulnerable if all hell broke loose.

Jill slipped her hand into mine as we started to march, a sudden jerk echoing through the crowd as we headed to the bridge. There were two large bridges connecting North and South Shallot – and a handful of smaller ones – and we were walking straight to the North Bridge, a bridge so wide and strongly built it could easily handle the crowd. I hoped. The bridge wasn’t a drawbridge, unlike some others linking the two parts of the city together. The aristos wouldn’t be able to keep us out by simply raising the bridge, leaving us stranded on the near side of the river. If we were lucky … the crowd was well-behaved, compared to some, but it would be very hard to stop if we found we were walking right into the river …

The cry went up. “REFORM! REFORM! REFORM!”

I felt myself swept up in the sound, shouting with the rest as we marched over the bridge and up the long road. The guards on the crossing eyed us warily, but made no attempt to stop us. I suspected they were screaming for orders, trying to get their superiors to tell them what to do … probably not trying very hard, in case their superiors ordered them to stop the crowd by any means necessary. They’d be foolish to try, I thought. They hadn’t had time to cast the wards that might have kept us off the bridge, and we were already on the far side. I hoped they had the sense to stay put, without doing anything stupid. I had more sympathy for armsmen than most – my time in House Bolingbroke had convinced me the armsmen were more than just silly uniforms and aristo muscle – but there was no way I could save them if the crowd attacked. The friendly mood was darkening, just a little, as we made our way up the road. We were crossing a line.

Jill’s grip tightened as we walked past the first mansion, a giant building that had clearly seen better days. The walls looked broken and cracked, the garden inside a jungle rather than the neatly trimmed lawns I recalled … the windows flickered oddly, suggesting they were illusions. A command ran through the air and our eyes snapped right, practically in unison, as we marched onwards. I wondered, as we turned away again, just what that had all been about. It had seemed to come out of nowhere.

We kept moving, chanting loudly as we passed the next mansion … and the next. They were in better state, the armsmen on the gates wearing fancy uniforms … they looked nervous, even as they stood their ground. The windows beyond were lined with people watching us, aristos and their servants … I wondered, suddenly, how many of the latter were sneaking out to join us. Not many, I feared. There was no shortage of youngsters who had no prospects, save to sign up for life as a bootblack boy or a scullery maid and hope they could work their way to the top. Any servants who joined us would probably be fired and replaced before midnight. The reform movement had made it clear that any business that penalised marchers would be boycotted, but there was no way they could boycott a Great House. Or a business that catered only to the aristocracy.

First things first, I told myself. The march was still going, our voices shaking the air. Jill’s grip tightened, time and time again, as we shouted ourselves hoarse. We can deal with the rest later.

I tensed, despite myself, as we moved past House Bolingbroke. The armsmen, no longer unaware of our approach, had moved behind the gates and were carefully watching, all the while setting up wards and barricades to keep us from getting over the walls and into the gardens. We had no intention of doing anything of the sort … in fact, we had been told – in no uncertain terms – that it was to be a peaceful march, without any disorder. I hadn’t seen a single pickpocket amongst the crowd, or groper taking advantage of the chaos to cop a feel … they’d be lucky if the stewards only beat them so savagely they couldn’t hope to walk home. The city guards were meant to keep order, but most people had to rely on their own resources. It was a lucky thief who got away, after being caught.

Jill put her lips to my ear. “That’s Jackson there, with the rest,” she said. She was practically shouting and yet I could barely hear her. “They have enough sense to behave themselves.”

I hoped she was right. Jackson had been a good man, as armsmen went. He’d flirted a little – they all had – but he’d never tried to strong-arm us into his bed. I’d never heard of him doing it with anyone, male or female. I didn’t risk a look as we marched onwards, but I believed it was him. He was no coward, and it wasn’t like him to cower behind the ranks when all hell was on the verge of breaking loose. I hoped he’d be fine. The rest of the crowd wouldn’t see anything past the uniform, past the reminder he worked for their oppressors. They didn’t see him as anything other than the enemy’s tool, a tool that could be broken. And would be, if he came out to fight.

The crowd marched on, passing the final mansions – each one finer than the last – before crossing the South Bridge. The gatehouse was open and empty, abandoned by the men who were supposed to prevent unwanted visitors from entering North Shallot. I guessed they’d fled, or been ordered to fall back and let us go, although there was no way to be sure. The aristos rarely acted quickly, in my experience, but thousands of people marching through their territory was something they could hardly ignore. I relaxed, slightly, as we moved towards the common green, the crowd starting to come apart as it became clear the formal march was over. A number of shopboys and girls ran off, hoping to get back before their absence was noted. Their employers might not fire them, for fear of boycott, but beating junior employees was perfectly legal. I’d been lucky. Master Travis had never beaten me. Others hadn’t been anything like so lucky.

Jill passed me a bottle of water. I sipped gratefully, as sweat beaded on my back and drenched my dress. It was the very tail end of summer, the deceptively hot days that tried to deceive us into thinking it would be hot and sunny forever, before plunging down into snow and ice. We were supposed to have warmer winters than the far north, but I found it hard to believe. The river never froze over, but sometimes we saw chunks of ice floating down to the sea.

I sat on the grass and leaned against Jill, trying to relax and calm my beating heart. It felt as if I had run for miles, or braved the lair of a savage dragon … I knew, all too well, just how ruthless the aristos could be. We could have been turned away by magic, or force of arms, or much – much – worse. Reform insisted we had strength in numbers, and the advantage of surprise, but numbers meant very little when you were pitted against superior magic. I had seen preteen aristos with magic intimidate grown men and women, tormenting them with nasty hexes and curses that could be difficult, if not impossible, to reverse. I’d been a victim myself …

“REFORM! REFORM! REFORM!”

I straightened as the cry rang out, once again. Louise Herdsmen was standing on a podium at the head of the green, seeming to look at us directly. There was no magic, as far as I could tell, just the sheer force of her personality. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen her, but …she was remarkable, burning with a fire that proved her commitment to the cause in a manner that bested any words. I had heard people make all kinds of promises, from suppliers who’d told me they’d totally have the goods within a week or so to men who’d promised to marry me if I raised my skirts and let them have their fun, but … words were cheap, but deeds were not. The mere fact she had managed to put together a protest march and led it right through North Shallot spoke louder than any manifesto, no matter what pretty promises it made.

Jill’s grip tightened. “Magnificent, isn’t she?”

I felt a flicker of envy, mingled with understanding. Louise wasn’t classically pretty, unlike Jill, and she wasn’t exotic by local standards – unlike me – but she was striking, in a manner that wasn’t sexual. It was something else, a yearning that called to me … something promised, perhaps, yet very long in coming. I swallowed, hard, as I stood without quite realising what I was doing. I wasn’t the only one.

“We have won a great victory,” Louise said. She was using an amplifier charm to make sure we all heard her, but there was no magic in her voice. One brush with a compulsion charm had been quite enough, as far as I was concerned, and I’d studied hard to make sure it would never happen again. “We showed them our power, and our unity. We showed them we could no longer be ignored. We showed them they have to adapt to us now, rather than us bending the knee to them!”

She went on in much the same vein, while the crowd cheered and celebrated. I wasn't so sure, personally. We had caught the aristos by surprise, true, but that wouldn’t happen again. They would gather themselves, and bring all their power to bear against us …

… But would her plan work?

It would, on paper. The secret ballot issue was one that had been percolating for a very long time. I’d seen it myself, in the Shopkeeper’s Guild. No one was ever surprised by the outcome of elections because no one dared to vote against the favoured candidate, even if his only involvement with shops was writing cheques to cover his wife’s debts. It was rare for the favoured candidates to lose, almost unheard of. If I recalled correctly, Louise was the first dark horse candidate in twenty years. The first successful one, at least. The remainder had rarely mustered enough votes to stand for election a second time.

“I charge you all to remember what we accomplished today,” Louise said, in conclusion. “And I charge you to remember that they cannot punish us all, if we vote against them. Remind your representatives of that!”

She stepped down, to more cheers. I felt a sudden wave of … emptiness … as the crowd came apart, our unity splintering as some headed home and others started a small party on the green. A handful of stallkeepers, scenting profit, had set up shop on the edge of the green, already – no doubt – rubbing their hands together with glee as long lines formed outside their stalls. I felt my stomach clench, painfully. The food was cheap, although today I suspected prices would be raised, but it was also unhealthy. I had learnt that lesson the hard way. No matter how nice a piece of sausage in a bun smelled, it was never as good when it worked its way out of your system.

“This way,” Jill said, tugging my hand. “I have someone I want you to meet.”

I hesitated. “Shouldn’t we be heading back to the shop?”

“It’s after lunch,” Jill reminded me. “Quiet time.”

I snorted, then followed her. Afternoons were normally quiet, at least until the kids were released from school or their parents finished work for the day, but we normally had one or two customers between lunch and dinner. They’d be unlucky, I decided, although it was unlikely it would be disastrous. Anyone who needed something urgently would go to the healers, rather than an alchemist. We were licensed to provide medical potions, but couldn’t dispense medical advice. 

Jill kept walking, ignoring a pair of young lads who looked hopefully at us, and led me into a small building. There was no sign on the door, nothing to suggest what it was or why it had been set up on the edge of the green. A private hall, perhaps? My stepsisters had been allowed to hold their own parties – I never had – and my stepfather had rented a hall for them, although that hall had been somewhere in Water Shallot. This one …

I paused as we entered a large chamber. Louise stood there, surrounded by three other people … one I recognised. Clive, a former broadsheet boy who had held a candle for me years ago and was now part of the reform movement, as well as the smuggler’s underground.  We hadn’t talked much, since he’d realised I’d never return his interest, but still … he had been a good friend, once upon a time.

“Jill,” Louise said. She had a way of speaking that made you feel as though you were the most important person in the room, even if she wasn’t talking to you. “And Rebecca?”

I nodded, unsure if I should curtsey. Reform was supposed to be about equality and yet, she was a representative. Louise solved the dilemma by holding out a hand for me to shake, her eyes studying me with undisguised interest. I had the feeling Jill had probably told her a great deal about me, over the last few weeks. It had been Jill who’d taken me to my very first reform meeting.

“It’s good to meet you at last,” Louise said, with none of the hesitancy I’d grown used to from so many others. There was only one half-caste family who knew their ancestors by name, and I had no connection with them as far as I knew. Anyone who looked at my features knew I had nothing to offer, beyond myself. It wasn’t enough for most. “I’ve heard a great deal about you, and your inventiveness.”

I felt myself flushing, helplessly. I had ideas, hundreds of ideas, but I couldn’t develop them without the guild’s backing. Master Travis had left me his notes, and a few other things, yet … I wondered, not for the first time, just who he’d been corresponding with, when he developed his ideas. The letters were carefully charmed to hide the identity of the writer, in a manner I simply couldn’t crack. If it was someone in the guild … I shook my head. Whoever it was, they had never bothered to get in touch with me. I had no idea if they were even alive.

“Thank you,” I managed.

Louise met my eyes. “What happened when you tried to join the guild?”

“I couldn’t prove my idea worked,” I said, unable to keep the frustration out of my voice. It had worked when I’d practiced, but not when I’d tried to demonstrate the practice in front of the guild. I had wondered if someone intended to steal my idea and claim the credit, yet if someone had they’d never bothered to patent the process themselves. I kept up on all the alchemical journals and none had so much as mentioned it. “And they refused to accept me as a guildswoman.”

“We will do something about that, when we build a better world,” Louise said. I had the feeling she meant it. Of course … she’d been a merchant’s daughter, condemned to remain in the lower orders unless she found a patron willing to take her as a client. She would understand the frustration. “But we were wondering if you would be willing to do something for us?”

I looked back at her. “Like what?”

“We need potions,” Louise said. “And finding a reliable supplier is so hard these days.”

My lips twisted. It wasn’t that hard to find a basic brewer, but someone with master-level skills who could be trusted was much harder. I had no patron, no one I would have to tattle to if I learnt anything of interest … I could be trusted, in a manner few others could be. No one would blame a client for reporting to his master, but …

“It depends on what you want,” I said. “And if you have the right supplies.”

“And payment,” Jill added, quickly.

Louise smiled. She was a merchant’s daughter. Haggling ran in her blood. “Of course,” she said. “Given time, we can get you anything.”

It was one hell of a boast. If someone else had said it to me, I wouldn’t have believed them. And why should I?

But Louise? I believed her.

Chapter Five: Akin

I couldn’t help feeling slightly uneasy as the butler showed me into the meeting room.

It wasn’t as though I was unwelcome in Aguirre Hall. Cat and I were betrothed. I had visited with my father to meet with my betrothed, under proper chaperonage, more times than I could count. I had sneaked into Cat’s workshop too, both families turning a blind eye as long as we behaved ourselves and didn’t get caught by the Grande Dames. But this … it was traditional for the Heir Primus to represent his father, as Alana represented Joaquin Aguirre, and I had expected I’d be doing it myself, learning the ropes while ensuring that any mistakes could be swept away through a simple legal fiction of an inexperienced heir overstepping his bounds. I should have had a safety net. Instead, I spoke for my family – I led my family – and any mistakes could have serious consequences. It was hard not to envy Alana as she sat next to her father, her expression unreadable. She might find it embarrassing to be the child in the room – even though she was legally an adult – but at least she couldn’t land her family in hot water. I could.

I allowed my eyes to sweep the room as maids came and went, bringing us mugs of steaming tea and coffee and plates of small pastries. There was no alcohol, much to my relief. Cousin Francis might have gone out drinking every week or so, when we’d been at school, and staggered back to the dorm the following morning, but I’d never been a drinker. I had two distant uncles who drank from dawn to dusk and neither of them were inspiring role models, their immediate families waiting impatiently for them to drink themselves to death. Perversely, I reflected, they’d caused my father less trouble than some of my more sober relatives …

The pang of grief took me by surprise. I’d tried to pretend, at least to myself, that my father had just gone to inspect the estates and would return shortly, but nothing could hide the fact my father was gone, my mother had taken to her rooms, and I was the leader of my family. If father had been here … no. There was no point in wishing for something that could never be. No magic could bring back the dead, no matter how many con artists insisted they could … if their mark paid enough and sacrificed enough. It was impossible.

I schooled my face into a blank mask and looked from face to face. Lord Joaquin Aguirre, Cat’s father, sitting at one end of the room with his eldest daughter beside him. He wore his High Magus robes, an outfit that somehow looked good on him, and rested his hands on his lap. My father and he had been rivals, then allies, and now … he had offered his assistance, as I took control of my family, but I knew better than to accept. The rest of the family would never tolerate it, even after Cat and I were formally married. I’d be lucky if I was merely removed from my post and sent into exile …

My heart twisted. The hell of it was that I wouldn’t mind if Cat came with me. We could go forging together, build a life that had no need of the aristocracy … no. That wouldn’t happen. Cat was too vulnerable to be allowed out on her own, no matter how much I swore to protect her. Her family might let us share the workshop, or … I shook my head. It was just another pointless fantasy, more absurd than the last. Besides, I had my duty. The family came first.

I kept studying the room. Simon Bolingbroke, a few years my senior, Patriarch of House Bolingbroke after a series of events no one quite understood. Lady Fitzwilliam, Lord MacDonald … Lady Odelia, a woman who reminded me, at a very primal level, of Stregheria Aguirre. Her past was a mystery, even to the Great Houses. She had often been heard to boast she’d created herself and many people believed it, a person who was the life and soul of every party and, from what I’d heard from my father, a person who was also very good at getting enemies to sit down, out of the public eye, and actually talk to each other. My eyes lingered on her face, wondering how she managed to look so young despite being old enough to be my mother. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought she was only a few years older than me. And Lucy Lamplighter ... I was surprised she’d been invited. The council had no official existence, at least not as far as anyone outside the senior aristos knew, and there was no pressing reason to invite her. Perhaps Alana had talked to her father, about the brief meeting with Louise. It was as good an explanation as any.

My blood felt cold as the last of the maids curtseyed and withdrew, leaving us alone. The council represented most of the Great Houses, a combination of wealth, influence and power that meant the remainder of the aristocracy would go along with whatever it decided, if it managed to decide on anything. I glanced from face to face, silently accessing the visible and invisible ties of blood, money and patronage that would determine which way each person would vote. Some would vote against any measure because of who proposed it; some would loudly support it before they knew what it actually was. It was the old problem, one my father had blessed and cursed in equal measure. It was difficult, almost impossible, to get anything done openly. Sometimes, you had to pretend to resist something just to get everyone else supporting it …

And I was meant to do it myself. I felt like an imposter.

Joaquin Aguirre leaned forward, moving with a confidence I knew I couldn’t match.

“You all know what happened,” he said, bluntly. The sole advantage of the council was that the normal formalities, the polite chatter that masked shadowy agendas and covert manoeuvrings that sometimes ended with a knife buried in an enemy’s back, could be put aside. “Two hours ago, a large crowd of protestors marched across the North Bridge and made their way through North Shallot, before crossing the South Bridge and returning to South Shallot. There was no warning, not from our agents planted in the reform movements and not from any of our other clients. We were taken completely by surprise.”

He paused. “The march was not small, either. Preliminary estimates put the numbers at ten to twenty thousand marchers. This may be an exaggeration, to be fair, but it is clear that large numbers of people simply left their posts, or their schooling, and joined the marchers as they crossed the bridge into our territory. Even if the estimate is revised downwards significantly, it was still an incredibly large number.”

I winced. The city’s population was estimated to be somewhere between half a million to a million, from the highest aristocrats to the lowest of the low. Shallot was one of the biggest cities on the continent, a trade nexus as well as home to the premier magical academy in the country. The population rose and fell with the seasons, as people came to the city in search of jobs or education, or returned home at high summer to help with the harvest. It didn’t help that a number of jobs were off the books, shady employers circumventing the guilds to hire workers who had no guild support and could therefore be abused at will. If a sizable percentage of that population had marched through Shallot …

“I discovered that three of my scullery maids had joined the march,” Lady Odelia said, curtly. “They have been instantly dismissed without reference, of course. I suggest you do the same.”

I winced and tried to hide it. Being dismissed was a good way to ensure you were never hired again, not as a scullery maid and certainly not as anything higher. It would have been kinder – and perfectly legal – to give the poor girls a beating instead. It wasn’t as if joining the march was illegal …

“I have not checked with my staff,” Simon Bolingbroke said. “But I am sure none of them would be so foolish as to leave their posts.”

“We will investigate, of course,” Lord MacDonald said. I hoped his staff were smart enough to hide their involvement if they had attended the march. “But we are getting away from the point.”

He looked from face to face, his eyes lingering briefly – very briefly – on me. “That march was a show of strength. It was a clear warning that subversives have immense influence within the lower classes, that they can mobilise thousands of marchers without warning and send them prancing through our neighbourhood. It was a threat, one that reaches right into our homes and businesses. We must take swift and decisive action.”

“My daughter was asked to attend a meeting with Louse Herdsman, Representative of Magus Court,” Joaquin Aguirre said. “I believe you will find her report illuminating.”

He nodded to Alana, who spoke with a calmness I knew she didn’t feel. “Lord Akin and I met with Louise, a meeting arranged by Lady Lamplighter at very short notice. She told us she intends to introduce a bill mandating secret ballots for future elections, and requested that we supported her. The march was clearly timed to coincide with that meeting. The marchers crossed the bridge at precisely the right moment to make an impression.”

“A secret ballot?” Lady Fitzwilliam laughed, derisively. “Whoever heard of such a thing?”

“The dockyard workers,” I said. “And it worked very well for them.”

Lady Fitzwilliam looked at me as if I were a scullery maid, perhaps one who had committed the terrible offense of not banging my nose against the floor when I grovelled in front of her. I forced myself to stare back, reminding myself that I was the head of my house, not some impudent servant in need of a whipping. She would never have dared look at father like that, I was sure. But then, my father had always had a vindictive streak. 

“On paper, the request is very reasonable,” I said. It would also be hard to dismiss, certainly not without admitting the public ballot existed to make sure the voters voted the right way … and that we knew who to blame if they didn’t. “And perhaps we should give it serious consideration.”

Joaquin Aguirre cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

“We had a House War, six years ago,” I said. A rustle ran through the room. It was generally agreed by all, without it ever having been discussed, that you didn’t mention the war. My family and his family had exchanged blows, starting a war that could easily have ended with the city in ruins and the king securing his control over the remains. “Since then, we have had repeated bouts of unrest: the incident at House Bolingbroke, the infernal devices, the attempted coup against my father, which resulted in his death …”

I paused, letting the words sink in. “Our position has been weakened, in many ways,” I added. “Our fitness to rule has been called into question, in the eyes of ambitious young men and women who want to advance and see the path ahead blocked by us. They believe the guilds no longer represent the guildsmen, and there is a great deal of evidence that they are right. They don’t. And now we have to come to some kind of compromise before we wind up fighting another war.”

Lady Odelia snapped her fingers. Sparks darted around her fingertips. “Is there any one of us who could not turn a rebel into a toad?”

Lord MacDonald snorted loudly. “You are proposing we make concessions at spellcaster point?”

He barked a harsh laugh, then went on. “We cannot make concessions, young man, and I will tell you why. If we let them bully us into making concessions, even something as minor as changing the colour on the factory gates, it will set a dreadful precedent. They’ll demand more, and more, and more, until we have conceded everything and nothing remains for us. They wanted to intimidate us, when they started that march, and remind us that subversives could even be found within our mansions. There can be no concessions.”

I gritted my teeth. Young man? How dare he?

“And let us not forget,” Lord Blackthrone added sweetly, “that a demand for a secret ballot will not be the end. It will change everything, no matter what we do.”

“Of course,” Joaquin Aguirre agreed. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Cat’s face was remarkably expressive, and Alana was nowhere near as practiced as controlling her expressions as she wished, but their father’s face could have been carved from stone. “It will be far harder to ensure the right people are elected.”

“Perhaps we should work to ensure the right candidates work for their guild, as well as for us,” I suggested. “It would be better to have their willing cooperation.”

Lord MacDonald was not impressed. “And could we guarantee keeping control of Magus Court?”

I scowled, inwardly. The honest answer to that question was no. There were one hundred seats in Magus Court – one hundred representatives – and only thirty-three belonged to the aristocracy. The remainder belonged to the guilds and had to be controlled through careful patronage, bribes, and the occasional character – or literal - assassination. It was easy enough to make sure the bribed stayed bribed, if you knew which way they’d voted …. but a secret ballot would change everything. If we lost a majority of the seats, or even a sizable minority, the reformists would be able to start pushing through other changes. And who knew where that would lead?

“Of course not,” Lord Blackthrone pointed out. “They’d be voting themselves everything on a silver platter within the year, if we let them take the first step. How long will we last if we lose control of Magus Court?”

“Louise is not an unreasonable person,” I said, although by their standards she was very unreasonable indeed. “There is room for compromise …”

“So you have said,” Lady Odelia said, in a sickly-sweet tone. “You worked with her, did you not? Did the slattern seduce you?”

I flushed, more with anger than embarrassment. It was commonly agreed an adolescent boy could be excused much – they were rarely considered fully adult until they turned twenty-five, no matter what the law said – and very few people would have made fun of me if I had slept with her. My betrothal could easily be a family arrangement, a marriage in name only, and as long as Cat and I were fine with it no one else’s opinion mattered. There were plenty of families in which the husband and wife had lovers on the side …

And yet, she was making the snide suggestion in front of Cat’s father.

Anger boiled through me. I had liked Cat, from the moment we’d first met, and I’d grown to love her over the years. She was more than just a pretty face and a remarkable talent. She was a friend as well as a lover, practically part of my heart … no one had been sure the betrothal would last – it had been put together to keep the peace – but it had. The thought of betraying her … it was infuriating. I was no skirt-chaser. I could wait.

“He is young,” Lord Blackthrone said. “Such feelings pass.”

“You forget yourself,” Joaquin Aguirre said, sharply.

“I have forgotten nothing about my teenage years,” Lord Blackthrone said. “It was easy to be idealistic, or to let a pretty face sway me, back when I was in my youth. But age brings with it wisdom, and the sort of folly that could be excused in a teenager can no longer be tolerated.”

I ground my teeth. “Like your brother’s public remarks?”

“Quite.” Lord Blackthrone gave me a cool look. “His remarks would have been folly, if he’d been thirty years younger, but instead they were distasteful in an older man.”

I couldn’t disagree. Geris Blackthrone’s crude remarks would have been distasteful in any context, although I’d heard worse in locker chambers, but from a man old enough to be my father they were particularly distasteful. There was a reason House Blackthrone tried to pretend Geris didn’t exist. He was a teenager locked in the body of an old man.

“We need to decide what to do,” Joaquin Aguirre said, sharply.

“Nothing,” Lady Fitzwilliam said. “We make no concessions under duress. Given time, this latest movement will splutter out and die.”

“Or we crush it,” Lord Blackthrone said. “Let us show them our strength.”

“And something is wrong with the magic,” I reminded them. “We still don’t know what happened here” – I nodded to the walls – “or any of a dozen other problems.”

“Freak accidents,” Lady Odelia said.

Joaquin Aguirre met my eyes, a clear warning, then spoke to the group at large. “If we play a waiting game, we can see what happens,” he said. I saw nods and knew the decision had already been made, although some would argue more than others to avoid any suggestion they were letting Cat’s father take the lead. “To act fast would reveal our weakness …”

I frowned, then met Alana’s eyes. She looked displeased. I suspected I knew what she was thinking. To her, Louise would always be a jumped-up commoner. I understood, but I was sure it was a mistake. Louise was cunning as well as clever and courageous. She’d already gone further than any other would-be reformer. How far could she go? In truth, I didn’t know.

The debate raged on, but in truth the outcome had been almost certain right from the start.

Chapter Six: Rebecca

My emotions were a maelstrom as Jill and I made our way back to the shop.

I admired Louise, really I did, but I didn’t like surprises. I had known Jill was involved with the reform movement, even before she’d taken me to the first rally, and yet I’d refused to ask her too many questions. I’d had hope, back then, that I could earn my place in the Alchemist’s Guild and rise to the top of my chosen field, a hope that had been dashed weeks ago. Jill … I had no idea what she’d been thinking when she’d gotten involved with the reform movement. She wasn’t just a shopgirl. She had a half-share in the shop itself.

The wards crackled around me as I opened the door and stepped inside. There was no line of waiting customers, somewhat to my relief. Most wouldn’t wait, unless the matter was truly urgent, and if it was they’d go to the healers. An aristo customer might get so impatient he’d kick the door down – I knew it happened – but most of those tended to go to the dressmakers or chocolatiers and confectioners. Good. I closed the door behind us, then reached out to prevent her from changing the sign from CLOSED to OPEN. We needed to talk.

I met her eyes, somehow. Jill looked back at me, emotions flickering across her face as she realised I was angry. We had argued before – I’d never met a couple who didn’t, once the honeymoon period was over – but this was rather more serious than minor issues like who was stealing the blankets or where we should go for our few days off every summer. It was hard not to feel a rush of affection, mingled with anger.

“You surprised me,” I said, sharply. “You planned that in advance, didn’t you?”

Jill flushed. “I thought you’d like the offer …”

“You could have warned me,” I snapped. It was one thing to attend a march, quite another to find myself face-to-face with Louise herself. She had put me in a place where it would be very hard to say no. “Why …?”

“I just thought you’d understand,” Jill said. I knew she was stubborn, that she found it hard to apologise after spending much of her childhood and teenage years being forced to take the blame for everything even when it wasn’t her fault, but … this was serious. “I …”

She swallowed hard, then scowled. “I let myself get ahead of myself,” she managed. “I am sorry.”

I winced, hearing a world of bitterness buried under her tone. Jill had always been more given to passion than me, more inclined to experiment with her new freedom after leaving Bolingbroke Hall. She’d had no freedom there, no control over her own life … even in the most minor matters. The supervisors had dictated everything from her haircut to her underwear, refusing to allow her to make any choices for herself. I couldn’t really blame her for acting out, yet …

“But you know what it was like, back at the hall,” Jill added. The anger in her voice was an old friend, mingled with the bitterness. It was safe for her to show her anger in front of me – in the hall, anger would’ve been met with the strap … if she was lucky – and it was a sign she trusted me, that she felt comfortable with me, but … it also felt wrong to see here. “Is it wrong to want something to change?”

She went on before I could answer. “I grew up there! I did my lessons there … I watched their lessons, the aristo lessons, and I learnt there … but so what? I was doomed to be a maid for the rest of my life, and you know it. I had no hope of advancing, no chance to rise to the top, and even if I did … I’d still be a servant. Lucinda was a servant and you know what she was like!”

I nodded, curtly. Lucinda had been snooty enough to pass for an aristo, but in the end she’d just been the housemistress, another servant. She took her anger out on us – on Jill – because it wasn’t safe to take it out on the true cause of her anger, her masters and the system that supported them. She had been older than we were, old enough to be our mother, and yet the aristos had talked down to her as if she’d been a child. I wondered, suddenly, what had happened to her. I hadn’t seen her since we’d left the hall, years ago.

“Louise offers change,” Jill insisted. “And I thought …”

I reached out and hugged her. Jill was almost painfully thin … she’d always be thin, no matter how much she ate or drank. The healers had told us that her early malnutrition and mistreatment had done permanent damage and nothing, save treatments we couldn’t afford, could help her. I had done my best to brew potions that might do something, but they hadn’t worked. Jill would look disturbingly thin the rest of her life.

“I understand,” I said. I did, too. “But don’t do it again.”

“I won’t.” Jill looked at the floor. “But she – we – do need your help.”

I winced, inwardly. We owned the shop, legally, but I wouldn’t put it past the aristocracy to come up with some excuse to reclaim the building and evict us. The deal I’d struck with House Bolingbroke had been six years ago and now … for all I knew, there was a loophole in the property transfer or something they could use against me. The information I had on them was no longer so devastating, now that Simon Bolingbroke had had six years to learn the ropes and establish himself. And – my skin itched, in sudden memory – I had no idea how much of their blood remained in me. I had carefully not checked. I hadn’t wanted to know.

My mind churned. I’d failed to be invited to join the guild. I’d never get any higher … I didn’t care about social status, not really, but I did want access to rare and expensive ingredients. I’d wanted to make a difference too, to create something that would be taught in schools for years to come, and I’d lost hope of that. It was just a matter of time before someone else stumbled across the same idea, or read my notes and decided they could make it work for themselves. The guild library was supposed to be crammed with experimental notes, concepts that veered between being theoretically possible and completely insane. I had heard that some of the most remarkable successes had come from one alchemist reading another’s notes and figuring out how to make the concept work …

And if Louise could change the system …

I had no illusions about how hard it would be, even if she convinced the aristos to allow secret ballots. It was one thing to read a set of potion instructions and another to actually brew it. No matter how simple the instructions seemed, there were always problems that could – and sometimes did – spoil the brew. And yet, that was no reason to simply stop trying to brew the recipe. It might not work the first time, but you could learn from your failure and try again.

“I understand,” I managed, finally. “I’ll help.”

Jill shot me a dazzling smile. “That’s wonderful …”

I leaned forward. “I’m still very unhappy, though,” I added, mischievously. “You’d better make it up to me tonight.”

“I will,” Jill promised. She leaned forward and kissed me. “Or we could go upstairs now …”

I kissed her back. I did understand, really I did. I had a career, I had skills that would ensure I could always earn a living. I knew people who would be quite interested in hiring a skilled alchemist off the books … it hurt my pride to work with criminals, it did, but if I had nowhere else to go I’d go there. Jill, on the other hand, had much less opportunity to support herself. The shop was her only asset and she could lose it at any moment, if there was a loophole in the property transfer. If she lost the shop, she’d never get another. She might be able to serve as a shopgirl, for starvation wages, or she might be forced into prostitution. The thought made me sick. The poor prostitutes tended to burn out quickly, then were left to rot. No one noticed. Or cared.  

There was a tap at the door. We sprang apart, Jill hastily glancing at herself in the mirror before hurrying to open the shop. I rolled my eyes – the sign said CLOSED, unless I was grossly mistaken – and fixed my dress. There would be time enough to make up later, once we dealt with the customer. Jill could handle him … I could go upstairs and get started on my afternoon brewing. If I didn’t keep the shelves stockpiled, we wouldn’t be able to keep making money …

“Rebecca,” a familiar voice said. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Clive,” I said, without turning. It wasn’t that I disliked him, it was just that … I shrugged and forced myself to turn. “What can we do for you?”

Clive smiled and put the box he’d been carrying down on the counter. It creaked alarmingly, suggesting it was full to bursting … and, from the way he’d been carrying it, couldn’t be levitated by magic. Clive had no formal magical education, and I doubted his master had had the time or inclination to teach him more than the basics, but he was smart and capable and he would probably have picked up a few dozen simple charms over the years. Hell, for all I knew, he’d been able to afford tutoring too. There were quite a few underground teachers willing to share what they knew, in exchange for pleasures they couldn’t get legally.

“It really is good to see you again,” Clive teased. “What would I like you to do for me …?”

He made a show of considering it. I glowered. I had little patience for customers who came in and acted as though they were a gift from the ancients to a pair of pretty young women. Their flirtations were just … tedious, rather than threatening. If there was one advantage to owning the shop outright, it was that I could banish such customers at will. Most shopgirls – and boys – just had to put up with it.

Clive read the room and dropped the act. “We have the first set of potion requests,” he said, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a letter. “And here” – he nodded to the box – “are the ingredients.”

I took the letter, noted the cunning little charm on the seal, and frowned inwardly. Whoever had cast the charm had aimed it at a half-caste … any half-caste. A clever way to conceal who the letter was for, I supposed, although if someone managed to bypass the charm and get into the letter they’d probably be able to guess it was aimed at me. I was far from the only half-caste in the city, but as far as I knew I was the only half-caste potioneer. Unless they thought it was aimed at the Griffin girls … no. That was just silly. I opened the seal and scanned the letter thoughtfully. It was a list of five potions and a due date.

“I hope you’re paying for this,” I said, firmly. There were limits to how much I could do for free. Two of the requested potions were relatively simple, but the other three would cut into my brewing time. There was no way I could put them on the backburner while I sought to keep my shelves stocked. “And getting them all to you by the due date might be problematic.”

Clive looked surprised. “You don’t think it can be done?”

I looked back at him. “Do you expect me to drop everything to brew these potions?”

“I …” Clive looked as if he wanted to say yes. I tried not to smile too openly. If I didn’t keep my shelves stocked, I’d run into problems with my customers. “Is there anything we can do to speed it up?”

“One woman takes nine months to have a baby,” I told him, bluntly. He didn’t blush. The callow youth I’d known had changed in the last few years. “But you cannot have nine women and expect them to make a baby in one month.”

He said nothing, for a long moment. “We could pay through the nose.”

“Yes,” I agreed. If I was putting this project first, I’d have to buy replacement stock from other brewers. That would be humiliating – people would talk – and if it happened again it would be disastrous. Prices would go up everywhere, and I’d be blamed. “But you could only do it once.”

Clive met my eyes. “We’ll pay double the promised funds, up front, if you commit to getting the potions to us by the end of the week,” he said. “All of them.”

I glanced at Jill, who shrugged. It was very tempting. The offered price was already high and doubling it would let me replace my stock, and also save some extra money into the bargain. I could use it … and yet, there was something odd about the whole offer. The reform party didn’t have support from the aristocracy, how could it? Did they have enough money to throw it around so casually? Or were they gambling on me?

“I can do it, if the money is up front,” I said. “But I’d better check the ingredients first. If they’re not up to scratch …”

I took a knife from behind the counter and opened the box. The interior was crammed with packages, each one carefully packed and marked with neat handwriting I didn’t recognise. Not a regular supplier, I decided, which meant … what? Imported goods? Or stolen? I knew some students who tried to make a little extra money by stealing ingredients from Jude’s and offering them to shopkeepers … sometimes, they even got away with it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. If I asked too many questions, it could lead to real trouble …

“It should be doable, if the ingredients are right,” I said. A couple of packages couldn’t be opened safely until the time came to use them. Most potioneers bought their supplies from reliable sources, just to ensure they weren’t conned. It would be hard for me to complain if one of the packets wasn’t marked correctly, or whoever had purchased it had been tricked. “But not until I get the money.”

Clive smiled. “I’ll get it to you by close of day.”

He winked, dropped a bow that was almost ludicrously fanciful, and hurried out the door, closing it behind him. I watched him go, puzzled. It was a rare messenger boy who had the authority to double the money offered, certainly not without checking with his master first. And Clive had made one hell of an offer … he was old enough to make promises he couldn’t keep. Probably. I shrugged, picked up the box and carried it down to the ironhold. The contents would have to be checked and secured, as much as possible. I’d have to hope the packages I couldn’t check had been labelled properly. All hell would break loose if they hadn’t …

Jill followed me down the steps and watched as I unpacked the box. I didn’t fault her – we had a long-standing agreement that she didn’t touch anything in the ironhold or the workroom and I didn’t meddle with the counter or the kitchen. Jill was a better cook than I was. Master Travis had taught me the basics, but he’d never had the time or inclination to cook anything particularly tasty for us. He’d seen eating as a distraction from his work.

I looked up as the last of the packages went into storage. “Does the party really have that sort of money?”

“They say so,” Jill said. “Quite a lot of merchants and shopkeepers are behind them.”

“It really is a lot of money,” I mused. I could understand the merchants wanting to back reform – the only way to advance was through patronage, which meant giving up one’s independence – but would they really expend so much money on the cause? Master Travis had been a merchant and he had never given something for nothing or invested in a project without a reasonable chance of success. “But will it be enough?”

Jill shrugged, then stepped closer until she was in my personal space. I could feel her slight body pressing against mine. Her voice was light and breathy.  “Do you want me to open the shop, or do you want to go upstairs?”

“Good question,” I said. We had around an hour, more or less, before the working day came to an end and customers flooded onto the streets. Plenty of time for some fun … Clive might be back sooner than he’d promised, but he could wait. Probably. “Let’s go upstairs. The potions can wait an hour or so.”

Jill smiled, then sobered. “Can you brew them all?”

“Yeah.” I took her hand as we hurried up the stairs, closing the ironhold behind us. “They’re not difficult, just expensive.”

“I knew you could do it.” Jill gave me a long kiss. “That’s why I recommended you.”

I gave her a stern look. “No more surprises,” I said, smacking her bottom lightly. I loved her, but there were limits. My mother had done everything my stepfather had wanted and look where that had ended. “None.”

“None,” Jill agreed.

Chapter Seven: Akin

“I don’t want to know,” I said, as Penny met me outside the office. “I’m going to the crypt.”

Penny raised her eyebrows. “Do you want me to come with you?”

I shook my head. The last three days had been a nightmare, the sort of headache that my sister would probably have enjoyed and my father would have navigated effortlessly. Everyone wanted to have their say about the protest march and the reform movement, from aristos who thought the marchers should have been blasted down the moment they crossed the bridge to distant aunts and uncles who thought the family should take the lead in the crisis or find a way to take advantage of it. And then I’d had to deal with the three young manservants and two maids who had – apparently – attended the march …

I groaned, inwardly. My advisors – their advice was always self-serving, putting their own interests ahead of the family’s – had wanted them flogged. Or dismissed. Or treated in a manner so heinous the most sadistic teacher at Jude’s would’ve been filing official complaints. The youngsters were lucky it was me who got to make the final call, although I don’t know if they appreciated it. Writing lines was unpleasant, to say the least, but it was better than being beaten bloody or cast out onto the streets to die. And it was less likely to create martyrs.

“I’ll be back up shortly,” I told her. Penny had kept her thoughts to herself, which made her practically unique. The only other two who hadn’t tried to tell me what I should be doing were my mother and Isabella, the latter having the excuse of being a very long way away. “You tell anyone who asks that I don’t want to be disturbed.”

Penny grinned. “Can I sit in your office and wait there?”

“No.” I would have laughed, if I hadn’t been so tired. “Just wait in the antechamber and tell anyone else who arrives to wait as well.”

I turned and walked down the stairs, heading to the very lowest levels. The mansion was busy – we’d barely gotten rid of the guests before they’d started to return to deal with the new crisis – and yet, the crowds faded away as I descended past the ground floor and kept going. The lowest staircase had always struck me as creepy, a metal structure leading down and down, seemingly all the way to the netherworld. The air grew colder, the grey metal shaft illuminated only by ghostly lights that flickered and faded, chilling me to the bone. I’d once asked my father why we didn’t fix the lights and he’d shrugged, insisting it was tradition. I had a feeling it was more to do with a simple lack of time. I didn’t have any time to do anything either.

The air grew colder, traces of magic hovering on the air as I kept walking. There were fewer wards here, beyond a simple charm intended to warn outsiders that they were stepping into the family’s sacred ground. We might have come to prominence in the Eternal City, back before the Thousand-Year Empire had fallen, but this had been our home for nearly a thousand years. It was hard not to feel my ancestors disapproval as I reached the bottom of the stairs and looked around, at the door leading into the crypt itself. The Cryptkeeper was nowhere to be seen. I hadn’t bothered to tell him I was coming.

I stepped forward and pushed the door open. The air shifted, a gust of wind brushing against my face even though I knew we were deep underground. A faint luminescence flickered in the air, with no discernible source, revealing an endless line of earthen graves. I took a long breath, tasting the ancient magic in the air. Some graves were marked with simple tombstones, some with statues of the long-dead person buried in the city and still others completely unmarked, but they all belonged to family. I was standing in front of a hundred generations. I could feel their eyes watching me. 

The darkness pulsed like a living thing as I walked down the path. I could see things at the corner of my eye, feel magic flickering through the earth and crackling through the air. I looked up and saw only darkness, even though I knew there was a stone ceiling overhead and above that the mansion itself. I could almost believe I was under the open air, save for the complete and utter darkness. There were no stars, no moon …

My feet seemed to stop of their own accord as I reached my father’s grave. He had brought me to the crypt the first time, telling me about the great and the good – and about the family of whom we did not speak – and reassuring me that they were living in the next world, looking down on us. I had thought, that first time, that they moved when the living were absent, holding parties and games far below the mansion and running back to their graves whenever the living came to pay their respects. Now, the graveyard was dark and silent and yet … I could feel something in the air, waiting. It felt as if time was no longer on my side.

I knelt by the edge of the grave – I knew better than to stand on it – and tried to compose my thoughts. The spirits of the dead often helped those of us who were still living, or so I had been told, but their help wasn’t always reliable. The dead saw more clearly than the living and while they were loyal to their families their priorities were often very different … I wondered, suddenly, if it was wise to ask my father for help. Did he want me to stand on my own two feet? Or did he think I should?

Nothing moved. The air was silent. It felt like a grave …

My lips twisted in a moment of dark humour. It was a grave.

I stared at the tombstone and forced myself to think. Louise … my emotions were a conflicted mess. I’d been accused of supporting her, of taking her as a client without any formal arrangement, of even letting myself be seduced by her. Alana, thankfully, had spoken up for me, but … I’d have to pay for that later. It didn’t help that Alana and I had hardly been boon companions. There had been plenty of time for Louise and me to have a secret relationship … I shook my head. It hadn’t happened – it had never been considered – but it still made it harder to argue she had a point. She had torn away the mask, the genteel lies we used to mask the steel fist inside the velvet glove, and now we could no longer hide from ourselves. Nor could our clients.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I was talking to my father, or to myself. It sometimes helped to verbalise a problem, even if it did mean people often made snide remarks about you talking to yourself. “We need to make some concessions, but if we make one concession there will be demands for more …”

I cursed under my breath. The protest march had shocked everyone. The council wanted revenge … not that they’d ever put it that way. It was never safe to humiliate a small man, never safe to embarrass him in front of everyone else, never safe to rip away his illusion of safety … and many aristocrats seemed bent on proving they were very small indeed. I had argued for compromise, and then for simply ignoring the protest, but hardly anyone had agreed with me. Cat’s father had done so, but then … he was going to be my father-in-law. He would have earned more disapproval if he’d openly disagreed with me.

“So what do we do?” The question hung in the air. “Is there anything we can do?”

The air seemed to rustle, magic flickering through my hair. I felt something brush against my side and looked up, but there was nothing there. The lights seemed to be growing brighter, or was it just my imagination? It was hard to believe I was alone, under the house, even though there was no one else in the crypt. The dead were watching me, waiting for me to make one false move. A shiver ran down my spine. I suddenly felt threatened. And yet, there was no visible danger …

“What do we do?”

I looked up. My father was standing right in front of me. I blinked, and he was gone.

I jumped to my feet, hand raised in a casting pose. There was nothing there and yet … I shook my head, calming myself with an effort. I was tired and alone and seeing things … there was no one, save for Cat, I could trust completely and I had no idea when she would return to the city. I couldn’t rely on my family and I couldn’t rely on anyone else … there was no way I could risk approaching Cat’s father for advice, or anyone else. Maybe Lucy … no. People would talk. Again.

You could always call Isabella home, my thoughts pointed out. Would that not help?

I shook my head. Isabella was no longer in disgrace, but … it had only been a few months since the attempted coup by others in the family. It hadn’t been her fault, and she’d fought to stop it, yet through some curious alchemy she’d still received much of the blame. And besides, she wanted to stay in Kirkhaven …

“If we do nothing, others will do something,” I said. “But what can we do?”

There was no answer. I stared at the grave for a long moment, feeling like a fool. My father had always expected me to think, to come up with the answers myself, rather than have them fed to me on a platter. In hindsight, perhaps I should have spent less time forging and more time learning the ins and outs of how politics worked. Alana had busied herself doing just that and she would be a good leader, when her father died. Me? I’d been lazy. I’d always thought there’d be time to learn, until that time was suddenly gone …

“I’m sorry,” I muttered.

I turned and walked back to the door. My back itched, as if someone was aiming a spell. I forced myself to keep moving, unwilling to risk a look behind me. Sweat prickled on my back, the air suddenly hot and then cold again, before I stepped through the door and closed it behind me. There was no help to be found in the crypt, and I’d been a fool to think otherwise. My father wouldn’t help me, and nor would the ancients. I’d have to do it myself.

The stairs felt endless as I climbed back to the top, so endless it was almost a surprise when I reached the door and stepped into the main corridor. A vapour message appeared in front of me, summoning me to my office … I glowered at it, telling myself that if the message wasn’t urgent the person who sent it was going to suffer. I wanted to sit down and think, not deal with another crisis … I forced myself to walk up more stairs, centring myself as best as I could, before stepping into the antechamber. Three young men stood there, holding a young woman’s arms so tightly she was gritting her teeth to keep from crying out. They looked so much like Cousin Francis I almost jumped. And they were holding a maid …

“Let her go at once,” I ordered, the wards giving my words a power that reminded them who and what I was. “Now.”

The leader let go. The girl staggered, rubbing her arms … her skin was so pale I knew she was going to bruise. They hadn’t needed to hold her so tightly, or at all …

“My Lord,” the leader said. I forced myself to remember his name. James … if I recalled correctly. A fifth or sixth cousin, a couple of years younger than me, and his two cronies. He’d been a big fish on the distant estates, but very little in the city … certainly lower in the hierarchy than either Penny or Isabella. I was sure that gnawed at him. I had vaguely known him at school, but we’d never been close. “We caught her with forbidden literature …”

He shoved a leaflet at me. I took it and glanced down. Louise looked up at me … her face drawn surprisingly realistically, unlike most of the aristocratic paintings I’d seen. The text called for reform, for more and better guilds … not the wisest thing to have on your person, if you were a maid, but not exactly illicit. Or forbidden.

I fixed him with a look, channelling my father as best as I could. Very few had defied him and none had done it a second time. “Thank you for letting me know,” I said, firmly. I looked at the maid, then nodded to the door. “Wait in there for me, please.”

James bristled. “My Lord, I …”

I cut him off. “I shall deal with it,” I said. “Is there anything else?”

“Well, yes,” James said. His comrades rumbled agreement. “Can we discuss it in …”

“No,” I said. I didn’t want to invite them into the office. It was bad enough dealing with grown adults who couldn’t be ignored. My father had been rumoured to have thrown someone out the window once … I was fairly sure it had never happened, but I was starting to understand the impulse. “What do you want?”

James hesitated, noticeably. “We’ve been talking, a few of us young bloods …”

I sighed, not bothering to hide the sound. Young bloods … it was a term for middle students, lowerclassmen on the verge of making the jump to upperclassmen, acting out before they were supposed to start acting like miniature adults instead. I had no idea why anyone bothered – Cousin Francis had certainly not matured before his unfortunate death – but I’d never been part of it. Going around, getting drunk and pretending I’d had sexual congress with two-thirds of the girls in school just wasn’t my style. 

“Something has to be done about the uppity commoners,” James continued. “We want to teach them a lesson and …”

My blood ran cold. “And what?”

James spoke on, as if he didn’t know my feelings or didn’t care. “Teach them a lesson,” he repeated. “We have magic. They do not.”

“They do,” I pointed out, with heavy sarcasm. Very few people had no magic. “And you are not …”

“They mocked us in our own homes,” James insisted. “We need to teach them a lesson …”

“Be quiet,” I met his eyes evenly, old anger boiling at the back of my mind. Cousin Francis had been very like James, in his way, all loud and boastful and good – and well-connected – enough to back it up. He didn’t lack talent, or good looks, but I’d had my fill of that sort of person years ago. Any regard I’d had for them had died with my cousin. His lack of forethought had made him the perfect tool for one man’s revenge. “Be quiet and listen to me.”

I held his gaze. “This situation is already bad enough. It does not need you making it any worse. Go back to school and stay there, do your lessons, and keep your heads down. The family needs qualified and graduated magicians, not thugs on the street.”

“But …”

“Two choices.” My eyes never left his. “You can do as I tell you, or you can go back to the estate and stay there.”

James tried to hold my gaze, then wilted suddenly. “Yes, My Lord.”

I pointed at the door behind me. “Out.”

They left, looking furious. I rubbed my forehead. I didn’t need problems like them, nor … Penny was nowhere to be seen. I guessed she’d made a show of going to find me. I put the thought aside and walked into the office, then stopped dead. The maid … I’d forgotten about the maid. She jumped and tried to kneel and curtsey at the same time …

“Stand straight,” I ordered. “What happened?”

The maid hesitated, then forced herself to speak. “They searched our rooms, My Lord,” she said. “And they found the leaflet …”

I groaned inwardly. I could have James and his comrades whipped … my father would have, if they’d done it when he was alive, but very few people would have dared argue with him. Me … technically I had the authority, and they had broken the rules by entering the servant quarters without permission, yet no doubt they’d argue that finding the leaflet was all the proof they needed. I felt the wards curl around me as my anger pulsed … I’d have to tighten the wards on the servant quarters, just to make sure it didn’t happen again.

And Cat would not approve if the poor girl was punished, I told myself. Why would she?

I met her eyes and tried not to wince at her flinch. “If anyone asks, tell them I whipped you and then forced you to drink a regeneration potion,” I said. There’d be more raised eyebrows if she didn’t appear punished. James and his cronies might try to take matters into their own hands – again – and who knew where that would end? “And don’t let them catch you like that again.”

The maid started, then dropped a curtsey. “I …”

“Go,” I ordered. “And remember what I said.”

I watched her turn and practically run out of the door, then put my head in my hands. It felt as if everything was coming apart, no matter what I did, and it was only going to get worse …

… And that my time was steadily running out.

Chapter Eight: Rebecca

“I’m just heading out now,” Jill called. “You sure you don’t want to come with me?”

I shook my head. I’d spent most of the day brewing complex potions and I was exhausted, to the point getting up the stairs and into our living room had been almost impossible. Jill had had to help me, in a manner that would have been downright embarrassing even if I’d been trapped in a wheelchair. And then I’d just sat in an armchair, drank my soup, and waited for my energy to return. It was a long time in coming.

“I’ll be fine,” I assured her. It wasn’t the first time I’d drained myself dry. I wasn’t that powerful, as magicians went, but brewing required both precision as well as raw power. I felt as if I’d been lifting heavy boxes with my fingertips, something that was possible – in theory – yet incredibly tricky in practice. “You have fun.”

Jill nodded, blew me a kiss and sashayed out. I hoped she’d be careful. The mood on the streets was still jubilant, after the aristos hadn’t retaliated against the reform marchers, but I knew it was just a matter of time before something happened. The shopkeepers on the street – we weren’t a guild, yet we worked together closely anyway – were already installing additional security measures, stockpiling food and drink and generally preparing for chaos. I hoped they were overthinking it, but I feared they weren’t. The infernal devices crisis had been quite bad enough, yet this was worse. No one had managed to mobilise so many marchers so quickly, in all of recorded history, without the Great Houses having an inkling it was going to happen until it was too late. Even if nothing came of it, their complacency had taken a nasty blow. I knew them too well to think they’d let reformers get away with it for long.

I sighed and reached for the latest edition of Alchemical Assessment, scanning the pages in fear of spotting my idea under another name. It wasn’t there, for better or worse. The articles discussing newer and better potions concentrated on small improvements, rather than big ideas that would either change the discipline beyond recognition or fail so spectacularly that everyone would just point and laugh. I rolled my eyes, bitterly, when I scanned an article about a tiny improvement to a very basic energy potion. The brewer had been granted his mastery … I checked the name, already knowing what I would find. An aristo. Of course.

Something moved on the stairs. I froze, cursing under my breath. Jill had left the shop and there was no one else, not now. It was late evening, well after we closed for the day. Ice ran down my spine as I gathered myself, uneasily aware we might have intruders. The shop was in a fairly safe part of town, and the combination of my wards and an effective City Guard should have kept burglars out, but there was no guarantee of total safety. There was a whole tradition of stupid young magicians – aristos, of course – cracking wards and sneaking into shops to prove they could do it, and gentlemen thieves who stole from the rich and promised to give to the poor. Or so I had been told. I’d never met a gentleman thief and I was fairly sure they didn’t exist. A gang of students was much more likely. If they saw me, who knew what they’d do?

I readied what little magic I had left, bracing myself. There was no time to hide, or to reach out to the wards. They weren’t tightly linked to me – I wasn’t a wardcrafter; I barely knew the basics – and there was no time to change that either. I wanted to believe Jill had come home early, but I knew better. She didn’t need to sneak around her own home. No, we had intruders and … I was in deep trouble. The best I could hope for, if it were a gang of students, was being turned into something or having my memory wiped before they left. A surge of sudden hatred washed through me. It might be a lark to the aristo bastards, but it was deadly serious to the shopkeepers they burgled …

The door opened. Zadornov stepped into the room.

I stared, wondering suddenly if I wouldn’t be better off with drunken students bent on mischief. Zadornov was … odd, a smuggler from far away who veered between a perfectly legitimate shipping businesses and underground enterprises that could supply anyone with anything, if you met his price. He’d had some kind of relationship with Master Travis, years ago, and he’d forced me to do his bidding. Once. We hadn’t seen each other for years, and I’d hoped we’d never see each other again. He hadn’t changed, I noted; he was still a tall man, muscular with broad shoulders, a pale face with dark hair cut so closely to his scalp that he was almost bald. He wore a simple merchant’s outfit, woven from cloth so expensive most merchants wouldn’t have been able to afford it, a sign he was a great deal wealthier than most of his class. No successful merchant would have purchased such cloth unless he was wealthy enough to take the loss. It was the very definition of a depreciating asset. 

“Greetings, Lady Rebecca,” Zadornov said, calmly. “I apologise for entering your shop without permission, but it was important that we talked without interruption.”

And you wanted to remind me you could reach out and touch me any time you liked, I thought. I had no idea how powerful and capable his magic was, but he had enough money and connections to hire magicians who could do the things he couldn’t. A man like him would benefit from keeping most of his power under wraps, rather than showing off to his peers. Zadornov was an iceberg. The visible part was a small fraction of the whole. You wanted to intimidate me.

“Greetings,” I managed. I knew better than to think anyone would come to my aid, against him. Jill wasn’t home and no one else would cross him. Everyone who was anyone knew Zadornov, by name and reputation if nothing else. “It’s been a while.”

Zadornov smiled, although the expression didn’t touch his eyes. “It has indeed, Lady Rebecca,” he said. The title was a mockery, though his tone was sincere. I reminded myself that Zadornov was a cold-hearted businessman, one who would do whatever it took to build and maintain his fortune. “You’ve done well for yourself.”

I forced myself to sit up, cursing his timing. If I’d been feeling better … it wouldn’t have made any difference. I wasn’t fool enough to think I could beat him, even on my own home ground. If he wanted me dead, I’d be dead. Or worse. Zadornov didn’t just make his fortune through smuggling. He had his fingers in every illicit business in the city, including some that catered to tastes forbidden even to aristos. I wasn’t surprised that he did a roaring trade. If something was forbidden, there were people who’d want it precisely because it was forbidden.

“Thank you,” I said. I hoped he didn’t take offense at my failure to stand, or curtsey, or kneel … I felt a surge of shame, mingled with anger, at my weakness. “What can I do for you?”

Zadornov smiled, again, and affected a sailor’s tone. “You don’t want to sit, and drink, and yarn about old times?”

I bit down, hard, on the desire to remind him that we were not friends or allies. He had used me and … I had no interest in doing anything for him, not now. But I had the nasty feeling I wouldn’t have a choice. Zadornov could bury me, or have me buried, or … he’d been said to boast that there was no better friend or worse enemy than himself and I believed it. He kept his word, even when it cost him, and he never let go of a grudge. If he decided to break me …

Zadornov straightened, suddenly. “Have you heard anything out of your Bolingbroke chums?”

“No,” I said, curtly. It crossed my mind to pretend otherwise, to hint I had contacts beyond even his reach, but he’d probably know I was lying. And he had contacts of his own within the aristocracy. “We don’t talk.”

He smirked. “They don’t ask you for potions they can’t get elsewhere?”

I shook my head. House Bolingbroke wasn’t amongst the most powerful families in the city through lack of magic, or skilled magicians. They wouldn’t need me for anything, unless it was something they wanted kept completely off the books and they couldn’t go to me for that. Any future Reginald – I shuddered at the memory – wouldn’t go to a brewer with any connection to the house. It would be a good way to get caught before he could put his plan into action.

“A shame,” Zadornov said. “I’ve been hearing good things about you.”

I didn’t feel very reassured. What had he been hearing about me?

“It’s been quite some time since Master Travis’s death,” Zadornov continued, after a moment. “I think he’d be proud of you, and everything you’ve achieved.”

“I hope so,” I said. Master Travis had been the closest thing I’d had to a real father. He’d certainly been a better father-figure than my real stepfather, a paragon of decency compared to the man who had been supposed to take care of me. No one would have said a word if he’d treated me as a slave when I went into his service. Instead, he’d taught me how to read and write and brew basic potions … I had loved him, and I had avenged his death. “And why …?”

Zadornov reached into his cloak and produced a handful of papers. “He and I had an agreement,” he said. “Amongst other things, we discussed potions that pushed the limits as far as they would go – and perhaps a bit further.”

My eyes narrowed. I forgot myself. “And you kept those notes from me?”

I cringed, a moment later. Master Travis had liked it when I talked back, or asked questions about matters I didn’t understand. Zadornov …? I doubted he’d take it any better than the housemistress at Bolingbroke Hall, who had been known to slap – or worse – servants who failed to show her the proper dereference …

“He was not the only person involved,” Zadornov said, holding out the papers. If he was annoyed at my tone, he didn’t show it. “But they are all dead, and their legacy is gone, and so I see no harm in giving them to you.”

I took them, unsure if I believed him. I had known Master Travis had been in contact with a number of other alchemists, including one who lived near the Garstang border and several more in foreign countries, but he’d always kept me away from such matters. The letters had been so garbled, strange combinations of alchemical formulas and pointless ramblings, that I hadn’t been able to understand the few I’d seen … I wondered, suddenly, if the ramblings had been coded messages. It was quite possible. You could hide a great deal of information in mad ravings, the kind of gibberish one might hear from an alchemist with a questionable grip on reality …

“You might find them of interest,” Zadornov told me. “Do you?”

I stared at the notes. Zadornov had rather less sentiment in him than Reginald Bolingbroke. I was certain he wasn’t giving them to me because of any emotional ties to my former master. He would have offered to sell them to me, perhaps, or passed them on to an up-and-coming alchemist with money to burn. I’d inherited a number of Master Travis’s notebooks and the work had been a strange mixture of practical formulas, theoretical recipes he’d never managed to turn into something workable and ramblings that had veered between the understandable to the downright insane. He was hardly the first alchemist to put his work in code – I’d been his student and I had problems deciphering much of his work – and yet, it was incredibly frustrating. It was no surprise to me that the guild tried to discourage it.

“Yeah,” I said, finally. “What do you want?”

Zadornov cocked an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

I tried not to show I was intimidated. “You’re offering these to me,” I said. I had a good memory, but there was no way I would recall everything if he took the papers away … not enough, probably, to try to recreate the potion from scratch. “What do you want in return?”

Zadornov shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Nothing,” I repeated. “Really.”

“Well …” Zadornov drew the word out, long enough to make me sweat. “I could use a couple of those potions, if you manage to get them to work.”

I flinched. “There are no guarantees,” I said. The last person who’d disappointed Zadornov, I’d been told, had wound up in five places at once, his remains cursed to suffer a long and agonising death. “I can’t promise success.”

“I don’t expect you to,” Zadornov told me. “My … agents … were unable to do anything with the notes.”

My eyes narrowed, just for a second. It was rare for an alchemist to drop completely into the underground – any trained alchemist, even a basic brewer, would have the skills they needed to earn a living – but there were quite a few, like Master Travis, who lived in the grey area between legal and illicit employment. He had brewed everything I did and more besides, from basic contraception potions to more complex study aids for desperate students, yet he had also undertaken private – and secret – commissions. I felt a shiver run down my spine as I stared at the notes. Master Travis’s last such commission had gotten him killed.

And if his agents couldn’t understand the notes, I mused, he must not be expecting very much from me.

I looked up at him. Zadornov could hire the best, through money or illicit rewards or simple blackmail. I liked to think of myself as a skilled brewer – most magicians had a very high opinion of themselves – but I knew I was hardly the best in the city. I probably wasn’t even in the top hundred. He could have found someone better, if he wished. And if he had …

“I cannot guarantee results,” I repeated. I wanted to make that point clear. “And I might have to charge you for the ingredients.”

Or ask you to find them for me, my thoughts added. A handful of Master Travis’s experimental formulas had called for rare and expensive ingredients, items I hadn’t had a hope of purchasing without a great deal of money and guild backing. And even you might find that a tricky prospect.

“I quite understand,” Zadornov said. He pulled a card out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Write down a list of what you want, then send it here. I’ll have the supplies shipped to you.”

I met his eyes. “The cost could be high, and there are still no guarantees …”

“I quite understand,” Zadornov said. His tone was mild, but I heard the unmistakable threat behind his smile. “I have been a legitimate businessman for quite some time.”

I doubted that was true. Most merchants wanted some return on their investment. They could hardly afford to fritter away vast sums on ingredients that might effectively be wasted if the alchemist was experimenting with new formulas and something went wrong. I had done the accounts, back at the old shop, and I knew how much money we had to spend to make much less money. Jill did the accounts here, and she’d pointed out the same thing. Zadornov would want some return on his investment too, no matter how many times I reminded him there were no guarantees. The sunk cost fallacy would get him too.

My eyes lingered on the notes. I could tell him to take them away and leave me alone … no, I couldn’t. Zadornov was smiling, but the expression was the smile on the face of the tiger. If I said no, he might get nasty and … what would he do? Threaten me? Threaten Jill? If his goons took her prisoner, and threatened to rape and kill her if I didn’t do as he wanted, what would I do? My heart clenched, painfully. It would be much harder to convince him the experiments had failed, once Jill was a hostage …

“I’ll do my best,” I promised, hating my weakness. I’d been pushed around for most of my life, by my stepfather and then by the staff at Bolingbroke Hall. Master Travis had been kinder to me, yet he’d still been my master. And Zadornov … “I really can’t promise anything.”

“There’s no timetable,” Zadornov said. Oddly, I believed him. Most clients wanted their commissioned potions yesterday, and refused to listen when you pointed out time travel was about as possible as resurrecting the dead. There was no way to speed up some brewing, and trying was a good way to wind up amongst your ancestors, looking down on the last half of the explosion. “Get them to me when you can.”

He turned and walked back down the stairs, as if he owned the shop. I glowered after him, feeling weak and helpless … I’d have to check and recheck the wards, even though I knew it would be pointless. Whatever I did, he could crack in a moment if he wanted in …

My eyes dropped to the papers. They were Master Travis’s work. I’d recognise his spidery handwriting anywhere. There was a second set of handwriting too … I felt a sudden stab of pure jealously. He’d had a colleague, and that colleague hadn’t been me. Who? The handwriting was elegant and formal, suggesting the aristocracy, but most aristo alchemists were guildsmen. They didn’t get involved with dubious alchemical correspondence lists.

Sighing, I looked down at the first sheet and started to read.

Chapter Nine: Akin

“I heard you had some problems with a pretty little serving maid,” Lord Falkner said. His jovial voice and snooty accent had always grated on my nerves, and his habit of grinning like a loon was madding. “I hope you gave her a jolly good thrashing, what?”

I bit my lip, hard. I could have told him exactly what I thought of him, when I’d been Heir Primus, and he wouldn’t have been able to do more than go whining to my father. Father would have pretended to punish me – I was sure Lord Falkner wasn’t high on his list of favourite people – or perhaps really punished me, as was his job as my father and superior. It wouldn’t have led to a feud, certainly not a formal dispute that could end in a full-scale House War. I hadn’t had the authority to commit my house to anything of the sort, directly or indirectly. But now …

“The matter has been settled,” I said, curtly. Two days had passed since the incident and I’d heard nothing, either from James or the world below stairs. I hoped that was a good sign. The maid should have assured everyone she’d been punished, and reminded the rest of the staff to destroy any other reform pamphlets that might have made their way into the mansion. “It is now closed.”

Lord Falkner took a swig of his drink, quaffing an expensive liqueur as if it were water. I tried not to show my disgust. There was someone like him in every family, a high-functioning alcoholic too high-ranking to be dismissed and yet too self-absorbed to be trusted with anything important. He had a chubby face, slowly turning red, and a body that bore the signs of a lifetime of ill-living, despite the very best medical treatment money could buy. He looked like everyone’s favourite uncle, the sort of man who was always laughing and never meant any harm … my father had cautioned me about such men, noting their foolishness could often do more damage than genuine malice. I believed it. If rumour was to be believed, Lord Falkner had nearly a dozen children who’d been born on the wrong side of the blankets.

He nudged me, hard enough to hurt. “There’s nothing like warming the seat of her pants to teach her a lesson, right?” He lowered his tone, as if we were pretending to share secrets. “And it puts some warmth somewhere else, doesn’t it?”

“I think I see Lady Alana over there,” I said, flatly. The crowd was so jam-packed it was hard to be sure of anything, but right now I just wanted to get away. “I’ll see you later.”

“Have fun!” Lord Falkner winked. “And don’t forget to lift …”

I walked away. I didn’t want to hear the rest, not now. The matter shouldn’t have been discussed in the mansion, let alone outside, and I had no idea who’d told the world. James was top of my suspect list, but I didn’t think he was self-aware enough to realise it might be embarrassing, much less personally devastating. Cat would not be pleased, if she heard the story, and I could hardly blame her. It would be so much easier if we were already married.

So you could finally lose your virginity, my thoughts pointed out. They sounded a lot like Cousin Francis, who hadn’t died a virgin. And do it without angering the person who is both your best friend as well as your lover and future wife.

I told that part of me to shut up as I kept walking, passing cluster after cluster of aristocrats pretending to have fun. The ballroom was as well-lit as ever, the tables laden with expensive food and drink, but there was a tension in the air that made it hard for anyone, save for the drunkards like Lord Falkner, to have any fun. The factions were already forming, aristos linking up with their friends to sneer at their enemies, then coming apart as they realised the real enemy was elsewhere. I frowned as I spotted a pair of serving girls, wearing outfits that left very little to the imagination, and wondered if they were quietly reporting everything they saw and heard to the reform faction. It would be hard to blame them. Cat had never liked the idea of wearing a dress that showed anything above the knee, while these girls would be showing their underwear if they bent over … she’d hate it, I was sure, and perhaps those girls hated it too. It would be very hard for them to turn down someone like Lord Falkner if he pressed them against the wall …

My heart sank as I walked up the stairs and onto the balcony, staring down at the crowd. It felt as if we were on a sinking ship, eating and drinking our fill before finally being dragged beneath the waves. There was something fake about the whole crowd, as if someone had been revealed as an imposter … no, as if we’d all been revealed as imposters. Louise’s speech had shaken us badly, I realised, and … I wondered, suddenly, if Louise was somewhere in the crowd, laughing at us. It wasn’t her style – she’d never struck me as having any fondness for unnecessary drama – but she’d changed a lot in the months since we’d graduated. Or perhaps she’d learnt to overcome her flaws. Or simply reason her way through them.

I felt someone approach and looked up. Alana nodded politely to me, her long dark hair spilling over her white dress. She pitched her voice so only I could hear. “It feels grim, doesn’t it?”

“I’ve been at funerals with more party atmosphere,” I agreed. I’d attended a handful of funerals, as a child, where most of the adult attendees had been there to make sure the dead man stayed dead. Father hadn’t explained why until much later. “What can I do for you?”

Alana beckoned for me to follow her, through a half-hidden door in the wooden panelling and into a corridor that wasn’t precisely secret, but rarely acknowledged openly. The aristocracy claimed to be individualists, with each mansion built in its own style, yet every major house had a place for people to meet and talk, without being noticed or watched. I hoped no one had noted us leaving together, let alone going into a private chamber without a chaperone. People would talk. And who knew who would be listening?

“Check the wards,” Alana said, as she closed the door behind us. The chamber was small enough to be intimate without being too small to be comfortable. “We need to talk.”

I tried not to bristle at how she was ordering me around as I checked the wards, then cast a handful of privacy charms of my own. House Blackthorne would be in some trouble if they were caught spying on their guest – society would crucify them – but it was wise not to rely on social convention for anything. Father had told me, more than once, that the rules were really nothing more than guidelines, shared understandings of good behaviour that could easily be put aside if the reward was high enough. If our conversation gave a spy an insight they desperately needed, or inside knowledge they could use to reap a profit, they’d use it and then put the blame on someone expendable.

Lord Falkner would be an ideal scapegoat, I thought, coldly. He’s so far out of it he probably wouldn’t even think to deny the charges.

Alana sat, brushing down her dress. I tried not to look too closely. My body was reminding me of just how long it had been since Cat and I had kissed, let alone done anything more. I could see the shape of Alana’s breasts, pressing against the dress … I was surprised her mother had let her go out like that, rather than ordering her to wear something a little more modest. Perhaps Alana was asserting her independence, or perhaps … I shrugged and kept my eyes on her face. It wasn’t my problem.

“Lady Fitzwilliam intends to start locking up her servants,” Alana said, without preamble. “And she expects the rest of us to back her.”

I blinked. “It’s that bad?”

“Apparently, you’re not the only one to have trouble with the staff,” Alana said. “She wants to restrict the servants to the grounds until further notice.”

“There’ll be a riot,” I predicted. Servants weren’t slaves. They were entitled to leave the grounds and have one or two days off every week … they were even entitled to a few days holiday every year. “There’s no point in paying them if they can’t go out and spend it. Or …”

“She is very determined,” Alana said. “With all the rumours flying around …”

I nodded. “Have we heard anything definite?”

Alana nodded. “I’m afraid so. Louise” – her face tightened – “will introduce her bill next week, as part of her inaugural address.”

I swallowed, hard. Louise was a minority of one, as far as Magus Court was concerned. The Speaker would make sure she never had a chance to speak, and would if he wanted to keep his post, but there was no way he could keep her from making her inaugural address. Any newly-elected representative had the right to hold forth on whatever topic they liked, from politics to their pet projects and hobbies, and that included proposing a bill. I was surprised the information had already leaked … I swore under my breath as I realised I shouldn’t be. Normally, inaugural addresses were sparsely attended. I’d been told of new representatives who’d addressed empty chambers. But this one would be made to a packed house.

“We’ll vote it down, of course,” Alana continued. I wondered if she was speaking for her father and his family, or herself. “It won’t get out of committee.”

My father’s words echoed through my head. Always try to think two or three steps ahead, he’d said, when he’d played chess with me. And assume your opponent will be doing the same.

I frowned. Louise might not have been a chess player – I had never seen her at the club – but she was smart enough not to play a game until she knew the rules. She had learnt a great deal from me, and she could research the rest. She would know her inaugural address would be sparsely attended, she would know her bill would be sent to a committee who would quash it …

And if she knows that, I asked myself, what will she do in response?

“It won’t,” Alana said. “There’ll be ninety-nine to one against.”

“Ninety-eight to one against,” I corrected. The Speaker wasn’t allowed to vote unless there was a tie. “Or …”

I felt my heart sink. Louise was smart. And I knew what she was going to do next.

“Check my logic,” I said. “There are one hundred seats in Magus Court, right?”

Alana nodded, impatiently.

“Thirty-three belong to us,” I continued. “That leaves sixty-seven. One is held by the Speaker and another by Louise herself. That leaves sixty-five. Right?”

“And, in other news, two and two make four,” Alana said, tartly. “Is there a point to this?”

I met her eyes. “How many of those representatives will keep their posts if reform accuses them of betraying their constituents?”

Alana opened her mouth, then closed it again. There were no hard and fast rules for how long a given representative had to stay in office before his guild held another election, but there were rules for recalling a representative and forcing them to face a vote of no confidence. If the representative voted against the bill … no one would know which representatives had voted it down, apart from the aristos, yet if the bill failed to pass it would be blindly obvious that at least eighteen non-aristos had refused to support it. Louise might or might not have a good idea which it had been, but it hardly mattered. She could start pushing the other guilds into recalling their representatives at once …

She wouldn’t need to replace fifty-one reps, I thought, grimly. She’d just need to swap out enough to make the remainder sweat.

“There’s no way she can convince the guilds to recall them all,” Alana said. Her thoughts were clearly heading in the same direction. “Can she?”

“She just needs to make a few examples out of the most irritating cases,” I reminded her. I knew at least five reps who had openly declared their hostility to reform. Their posts would be lost if their voters united against them. “And then the rest will fall in line.”

Alana looked furious. I tried not to stare.

“She can’t,” she said. “They’re our clients!”

Father’s words echoed through my head. “They’re our clients,” I said, repeating his observations. “They’re not our slaves.”

“Really.” Alana glowered at me. “They work for us.”

I shrugged. “There are limits to how far we can push them, no matter how much they depend upon our patronage,” I said. The quickest way to destroy a patronage network – a subnet, really – was to make it clear the patron was really the powerless client of a higher patron. If the patron had no power of his own, who would accept his patronage? “And if they fail to please the voters who vote for them, why should we be surprised when they get voted out of office?”

Alana’s lips twisted. “And so … what can we do about it?”

I eyed her. “Are you speaking for yourself, or for your father?”

“Both,” Alana said. Her dark eyes went very hard, just for a second. “It depends on the outcome.”

I felt a flicker of envy. If she made a dreadful mistake, her father would step in and remind everyone that she was his subordinate. It would be embarrassing, but hardly fatal. If I made a mistake, it would fall on me. And who knew what would happen then?

“We can try to get organised against the vote anyway,” I said. I doubted there was any hope of convincing the rest of the council to do anything else. They’d be so blinded by fear of the outcome that they’d do everything they could to make sure the vote was never held, or the bill failed spectacularly. You could normally find someone willing to vote for anything, no matter how absurd, but not this … not after the patrons had finished arm-twisting their clients. “And we can try to look for a compromise.”

Alana fixed me with a stern look. “Do you like Louise?”

I fought to keep my face blank. “How well do you know her?”

“She was just there,” Alana said. “Not really important, you know.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. It was hard not to feel ashamed. Louise had been an isolated student, with few real friends … she’d had no family connections, or good looks, that might have smoothed her way to social acceptance. Her manner – sharp-tongued and bossy – had won her no friends, even though she had learnt to moderate her tone a little. Perhaps if I’d reached out to her earlier … I’d made friends with Cat, even though our families had once been deadly enemies. “We all thought that, didn’t we?”

I took a breath. “Louise is smart and driven. She doesn’t just see the injustice of the world – she feels it. She has a cause, and she will fight for that cause, and she has enough knowledge and power to push the cause further than it has ever gone.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Alana said.

I scowled. “I don’t like her much, as a person, but I respect her. I respect her abilities as much as I respect yours. She might be from the lower classes, Alana, but that doesn’t make her stupid. She’s smart enough to understand her own weaknesses, and either overcome them or find ways to minimise them. And she’s smart enough to agree to a compromise …”

“Except there isn’t one,” Alana reminded me. “If we give her what she wants, we lose; if we refuse, we might lose.”

I shrugged. “What do you suggest?”

“Our spies haven’t reported much of interest, even now,” Alana said. “We may never get a handle on how reform thinks, or what it’s planning, at least until it is too late. I don’t know how she does it.”

“How many people live in the city?” I allowed myself a tight smile. “And how many of them are our clients?”

Alana ignored my jibe. I understood. The city was riddled with patron-client relationships, some open and others hidden in the shadows, but even by the most optimistic estimate they touched little more than a tenth of the population. The most important part of the population, perhaps, but Louise would have no trouble recruiting people who had never been part of a patronage network. She would even be able to vet them, with the right spells or potions. Any magician could cast a truth spell, and Louise – whatever else she was – was no ordinary magician.

“I want you to check in with your clients,” Alana said. “And push them to vote against a recall.”

“I can try,” I said. My clients might rebel if I pushed them too hard. The secret ballot might be bad for us, but it was pretty good for them. “I take it you’re going to be doing the same?”

“Yeah,” Alana said. She jabbed a finger at the wall, then stood and made her way to the door. I tried not to notice how her dress framed her rear. “You’ve felt the mood out there. They’re waiting for something to happen.”

“The whole city is turning into a tinderbox,” I agreed. Time was not on our side and yet … I had no idea what we could do. “And now we’re waiting for some idiot to light the match.”

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