“Oh, how far we’ve all come,” Annette said with a laugh. “Viola looks well.” I’d made her a tailored gown for the occasion, working together in the firelight of the parlor after my long days of helping Hamish and the charm casters in the hospital. The charcoal gray was cut like a man’s double-breasted frock coat in the front but swept into a gown’s long skirts. I thought, with a pang of nostalgia, about the pink gown she had first commissioned from me. How far we’d all come, indeed.
“A word?” Niko’s dark eyes blazed and he stood too close for my comfort. “In private.” He glanced to Theodor and Kristos, who stood talking with Maurice Forrest and Hamish Oglethorpe.
I stiffened. Next to me, Annette laid a hand on my arm, protective. Though she had eschewed her admiral’s sword, I knew she carried a slim naval dagger under her skirt. I laid my hand over hers.
“Privacy will be difficult to find here, I’m afraid.” I inclined my head toward one of the archive’s windowed alcoves. No one stood in the curve of the window itself, though plenty of councillors stood nearby, consulting a map of southern Galatine port cities. “That might be the best we can do.”
“Very well.” He marched toward the window, then whirled to face me before I had a moment to even think what he wanted. “I know what you’ve done.”
I stepped back, afraid of the intensity in his eyes. “What did I do?”
“You know damned well. Your casting.”
I swallowed hard, remembering the deep gold I’d woven through the crowd at the hanging. I had expected Niko to find out from someone who could see the charm, eventually, and I had anticipated his fury. “What of my casting?”
“How else did that noble bitch get elected, save your meddling?”
Fear broke like a soap bubble and I almost laughed—but then it settled like a film over my relief. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t—that I wouldn’t—use my abilities to affect political outcomes. Niko believed I had. And if he believed it, who else did?
“I didn’t do anything, Niko. She won the seat on her own.”
“Whore’s ass, she did.” Niko shook his head. “It’s not right. You can seed whatever you want with no one knowing, make people… do things.”
“I can’t do anything of the sort,” I bristled, but I couldn’t forget the Serafan methods of influence, of weaving magic and reality together to make friend and foe alike react however the caster chose. I had, in some immeasurable way, affected the crowd in Fountain Square, pushing them away from violence and toward benevolence. “And I certainly wouldn’t.”
“I don’t feel like listening to one of your treatises on ethics, Sophie, so let me simply say—I won’t stand for it. I’ll figure out how you do what you do and I’ll put a stop to it.”
I stared back at Niko, squaring my shoulders. “Viola won her seat fairly. Just as those three Red Caps and the anarchist did.”
“So you say. But so help me, Sophie, if you interfere with the selection of the governors. If your noble-born fiancé takes the rightful seat of one of our people—”
“If he does, it will be because the council feels it is in this nation’s best interest that he take a large role in leading it!” I took a steadying breath. “Besides, I can’t simply make people do what I want. It doesn’t work like that, especially for an election.”
“So it does work like that, sometimes.”
“No!” I sighed, exasperated. “If it concerns you, I will remain absent for the nomination and confirmation of the governors.”
“It does more than concern me. That this has gone unchecked, that you continue to bolster your noble friends, that you’re like as not a traitor to the new Republic.” He leaned closer, so that I could smell that morning’s sausage and onions on his breath. “It concerns me gravely.”
“I don’t have to stand for these sorts of insults. If I were a man—”
“If you were a man I’d have finished this already,” he said flatly.
I turned on my heel and returned to Annette, who was now joined by Kristos and Theodor. “We’re going to have to do something,” I said through breath that began to shake, “about public perception of charm casting at some juncture.”
“I’ll have to find a new printer,” Kristos joked quietly, but he took my hand and watched as Niko strode back toward the councillors’ platform.
The five new councillors were sworn in and presented promptly with a full agenda, including the nomination of governors to supplant the temporary positions we’d created during wartime. Annette and I left quietly, and I saw Annette sneak a last look at Viola as she rose to address a question about the ledgers of seized noble property. Annette smiled to herself.
I spent the day with Alice inventorying the wartime fabric reserves in preparation for decentralizing Niko’s storehouses, and came home with a head swimming with yardage and broadcloth widths and numbers of bolts of linen. Shortly after, the rest of the household arrived home in a chorus of laugher and shouts as they burst through the door.
“Meet the official, not temporary, fully vetted governor of Galitha!” Viola cried.
“The, as in singular?” I smiled. “Which one of you?”
“Theodor,” Viola said, beaming. “Voted near unanimously to nominate him.”
“Told you they’d pick you as one of the governors,” Kristos said. “As sure as I always win at dice.”
“I beat you at dice last night,” Theodor said with a weary smile. “I don’t know. I wish…” He paused. “I shouldn’t have accepted the nomination.”
“But you are more qualified for the position than anyone else. They know that. They know they need someone who has led before. Who understands how laws work,” Sianh said.
“Kristos didn’t accept his,” Theodor said. “He was nominated, Sophie. Nominated first, before anyone else.”
“And declined.” Kristos shrugged. “As it turns out, I’m excellent at political theory but actual politics? I can let someone else take the reins. I’d rather write the first pamphlets and books of the new Republic.”
“You can’t stand people disagreeing with you.” I laughed. “If you write books, you don’t have to listen to what people say about your ideas.”
“I can’t stand people with bad logic disagreeing with me and having equal say as I do,” Kristos said. “Theodor has the patience of a nursemaid for putting up with them. You should see him—he can manage to wrangle them like a sheepdog among goats.”
“And I now have a five-year term herding the goats,” Theodor said, disquiet deepening the wrinkles around his eyes.
“I say this deserves a celebration!” Viola said. “I’ll bring up a bottle of sparkling wine from the cellar—it’s still there, isn’t it, Theo?”
He opened his mouth to protest, then simply nodded. “There’s still a case of the Urusine and a few of the sparkling Lienghine.”
I caught his hand. “Would you like to step outside for a bit? While Viola whips a party out of a bottle of wine and some old prunes?”