“But our order will be unaffected.”
“That is my hope.” Hyrd smiled. “As soon as your run is finished, the looms may break.”
“I see.” I considered this. They weren’t asking my participation or even blessing in their endeavor. In pragmatic Fenian custom, they were alerting me to a problem, or at least the potential I would perceive one.
“You should return to your companion.”
“You told me and not her,” I said.
“You are Galatine, you are part of the Reform.” Hyrd shrugged. “She may be, or she may be angling for profit herself.”
“One never can tell.” The quip fell flat. “I trust her,” I clarified.
“That is well. But do not reveal anything to her that might compromise us, out of courtesy. Our names, that sort of thing.”
“Of course,” I murmured.
“And one other thing.” Hyrd cleared his throat. “There may come a time your new government can come to the aid of the Fenian worker. I hope you will remember our courtesy then.”
I nodded, agreeing to a tenuous alliance as the unofficial delegate of an as-yet-unfounded government.
6
I RETURNED OUTSIDE, SOBERED EVEN MORE THAN USUAL BY THE conversation with Hyrd, Beryk, and their silent but earnest comrades. Alba waited in the square yard bordering the front of the mill. The dark stone and scoured wood of the buildings made for a stark backdrop, but her strictly starched veil and dour gray gown provided little contrast. “He says that run is finished,” she said.
The wind bit my cheeks and made my eyes water. “The sooner we can leave Fen,” I added, “the better.”
“For your constitution or for the continuation of this war?” Alba led us out of the mill yard and onto the road.
“Both,” I replied.
“We will leave Rylke for the Pygmik shipyards once the cloth is all milled, and then onward to Galitha in good time. I’ve written to several contacts in the Allied States to see if they wish to invest, but I doubt they will reply before we have to finalize our finances with the shipyards.”
“I thought the Equatorials were stalwartly neutral in all this?”
“Perhaps they still are. I did not want to assume, given that the entrance of the West Serafans as at least tacit political allies of the Royalists may have changed their minds.” She raised an eyebrow—we both anticipated Serafan magical support even if they did not commit troops. “The latest news,” she continued, pulling a creased Fenian newspaper from her cloak. It was printed with cheap, smudging ink and was devoid of the flourishes and illustrations that spattered Galatine newspapers. “The Fenians care for foreign affairs enough to note that the harbor of Galitha City remains blockaded by the Royalist navy, interfering with regular trade.”
“I suppose that gives them all the more motivation to work with us,” I said. “Have we enough… motivation to keep them happy?”
“Quite sure.” She smiled. “The Order of the Golden Sphere is well-known for, well, gold.” She paused. “Which was never actually the intention of the nomenclature.”
“I think I understand the naming convention a bit more now,” I replied drily.
“You do, indeed.” Alba slowed her walk as we approached a curve in the narrow road that took us close to a sheer drop-off, gray stone plummeting to cold sea below. I thought at first she was slowing for caution’s sake, but no—she threw back her shoulders and inhaled the bracing salt wind. “All is going so well, but I would feel better, I admit, if we had some more recent word from Hazelwhite. I can’t imagine it’s easy for you to be away from your brother and Theodor.”
I opened my mouth, then clamped it shut again. Of course separation from Theodor was difficult. There was, however, a strange relief being apart from Kristos. I had never expected to see him again, not after his betrayal during the Midwinter Revolt. In the mess of emotions that seeing him again brought on, I had not found forgiveness among the relief, anger, joy, and continued grief at losing our once-close relationship.
“I don’t know how to feel about my brother,” I finally said. I could still see his name on the pamphlet Beryk had shown me, could almost hear his voice reading it. I could also see his face framed by firelight in Pyord’s study, fully committed to betraying me.
“Who would?” Alba said bluntly. “If my understanding of your relationship is correct.”
“I’m sure it is,” I said with wry assessment of Alba’s observations of my spats with Kristos. She gazed out over the gray cliffs, not at me. I was grateful she couldn’t see my reddening face. “He did try to kill me.”
“To be fair, he never did try to kill you, precisely.”
“Allow me some hyperbole,” I retorted. “His actions could very well have gotten me killed—and worse, he made me compromise my ethics.”
“Ah, well. Pyord had a good hand in that, too, didn’t he?”
At the mention of her cousin, I felt the blood rush from my face. “Yes, he did.”
“I do not quite know how to feel about my cousin, if we are being honest,” Alba said. “To play at politics, one need not deal in blackmail and extortion.”
“Well, good to know those are optional.”
“He died without any chance of my forgiving him,” Alba continued, ignoring me. “And, of course, without any remorse from him. And I suppose that is a significant difference between Kristos as I read him and Pyord—I do not believe I ever saw my cousin admit he was wrong.”
I swallowed. “Kristos does,” I said. “But still. What he feels and what I am willing to do aren’t the same thing.”
“Of course not. But you do have to put up with him for the time being. As an ally if nothing else.”
“Sianh said something similar,” I acknowledged, not adding that he had said it about Alba. “That we needn’t be friends to be allies.”
“Quite so.” Alba clasped her hands and gazed out over the choppy sea fighting with the cliff face below us. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?”
“If you like watching birds,” I replied, watching a teal-breasted cormorant dive for the waves.
“And do you like watching birds?” Alba’s mouth twisted into a quizzical grin.
“I can’t say that I do.” I dodged a loose cobblestone. “Are there any albatrosses here?”
“Albatrosses? No, not this far north, not this time of year. Why?”
“Something Theodor said once,” I replied. “I was just curious.”
Alba shook her head. “You two are a strange pair.”
Like a pair of albatrosses, I smiled silently. If there was any decision I was confident about, anything I felt deep in my bones that I had been right about, it was my engagement to Theodor. Separation from him proved that, absence revealing the ways in which I had molded a vision of life around the shape of him and me together. Apart from one another, the shape felt wrong, hollow in vital and unexpected places.
We rounded the curve in the cliffside road that led into town. Alba made a face as we approached the neat, ordered, and entirely predictable Rylke. “Fenian towns—they’re all alike. Except maybe Treshka, there’s at least a concert hall in Treshka. And chocolate cafés.”