It was cruel waking to memory, even as the sun poured bright through the window of the room where I had been put to bed. Not the room I’d shared with Theodor—Viola and Annette were wise enough not to make that error—but still, he was there. The furniture he had chosen, the dove gray of the walls, a painting of a brilliantly blooming tropical plant across from the bed. My voice gouged my throat in wordless agony and I buried my cries in a pillow whose case smelled like his preferred laundry soap.
I wasn’t as silent as I’d hoped, because Kristos tentatively shuffled into the room a few minutes later. I stared at him, looking like a madwoman with eyes rimmed red, I was sure, and with fear churning my gut.
“How long was I asleep?”
“Two days.” Kristos swallowed. “Annette thought it best to save you the shock to your nerves by lacing a cup of chamomile with nightbloom poppy. Naval trick.”
“If anyone ever drugs me again, I’ll—I’ll—” I found I couldn’t verbalize the word I had begun to say in jest: kill.
“I’ll be sure to tell her that.”
I waited, not wanting to ask, terrified of the answer, but I finally whispered, “What did you do?”
“We took him into custody,” Kristos said. “Some of his sycophants thought to put up a fight, but Sianh disabused them rather quickly of that idea. He didn’t seem particularly well supported, in any case.”
“You arrested him?”
“Of course. He needs to stand trial. He doesn’t deny anything, for what it’s worth. He said ridding the country of noble and magical influence was necessary.” Kristos sank onto the bed beside me. “Necessary. I hate that damn word. It doesn’t mean what men like Niko think it does.”
I stared at the painting of the blooming flowers, the colors bleeding into each other as tears lined my eyes. “I was afraid you had carried out the sentence yourself. And that I would wake and find the city at war with itself. And yet… a trial could tear us apart, too.”
“We will survive that. Due process, proper order, equal application of the law—” Kristos stopped, and I knew what we were both thinking. That was what Theodor would have said.
I closed my eyes. “I wanted to kill him.”
“If it’s any consolation,” Kristos said, “he feels the same way about you. Shit.” He exhaled. “I’m sorry, it’s not the time for jokes.”
“He said as much to me, once.” I sighed.
“He suggested he expected to find you both together. He had a brace of pistols on him when we arrested him. He distrusted your casting, he was convinced you had orchestrated Theodor’s election and had brought those nuns in, too. I—” Kristos broke. “If he had taken you, too, I couldn’t—I wouldn’t know what to do.” He straightened and wiped his eyes. “No, I’m sorry. This is your quiet fortnight, not mine. I don’t get to harass you with my problems.”
“We never really were much for old traditions at the best of times,” I said. “And now? There’s too much each of us needs to do to take a quiet fortnight.”
“No, not you. You—you don’t owe anyone anything. It’s your right.”
I didn’t care about traditions or rights or any other rationale for why it would be acceptable for me to lock myself in this guest room in my dead would-be-husband’s home. I only knew that I couldn’t imagine standing up and getting dressed and going out of doors to meet a world without Theodor in it, not yet. I had remade myself to fit Theodor in my life, unpicked the old seams and let them out, and now there was too much room. My life didn’t fit me any longer, and I didn’t know how to refashion myself again.
I stayed silent a long time, and Kristos didn’t press me to speak. “Kristos?” I finally said.
“Yes?”
“I don’t want to stay here.”
He didn’t question it. “I’ll find us a different place.”
“Ask Alice to come stay with us. And—maybe Emmi.”
Kristos nodded and left me to the silence.
When I came downstairs the next morning, Alice was knitting in the parlor. “I made tea,” she said, matter-of-fact, as though she had lived in this townhouse her whole life and we had only just discovered her. “Your brother is hiring the porters to move to the new house now.”
“Already?”
Alice shook out her knitting and rolled it around her yarn ball—a sock, I saw, as she stabbed her needles through it. “There’s a house requisitioned from the nobility, nice place overlooking the river, perfect as one of the governor’s houses. They’ve got three houses near one another, close enough to the city center for official business when needed.”
“But then the governors will need them—”
“Of course, you didn’t know.” Alice paused. “Your brother is one of the governors now.”
“Kristos! He—he refused the nomination.”
“Yes, but…” Alice cleared her throat. “After what happened,” she continued with deft avoidance, “with two vacant seats, the council asked if he would reconsider. So that at least one of the army’s earliest leaders would be one of the new Republic’s governors.”
“I see.” I let out a shaky sigh. It should have been Theodor. Anger surged at the stinging injustice of what Niko had done, taking Theodor not only from me but from Galitha. “I think I’ll take that tea now.”
66
WITHIN A MONTH, ALICE HAD OBTAINED A PERMIT TO REOPEN the shop I had given her. She insisted I take it back, at first, but I refused. It was hers by rights both legal and ethical, and I found when I considered taking up shopkeeping again that the prospect leeched too much memory into it. Even a new shop, a new location, and new wares would have been haunted by my old life. She moved into the apartment over the shop, as proud to have her own business as she was to have a better home for her and her mother.
More, I didn’t care to leave the apartment I’d carved out of my brother’s house. Every corner, every coffeehouse and tavern, every broadside churned out of the bustling printers across the city thrummed with gossip about the trial of Niko Otni. The evidence was exceptionally clear, but the political drama of it jolted through the city. A few loyal followers held tight to Niko’s cause, but the assassination didn’t have the effect he had hoped. He might have guessed as much—what gossip I couldn’t avoid suggested that no one else had been willing to take the pistol in their own hands.
“It was like an opera,” Sianh said as he took dinner with me in my sitting room the evening after Niko insisted on testifying in his defense. “Serafan opera. All stabbings and impassioned orations as to why the blood was a necessity and the blade a friend.”
“You said I would enjoy Serafan opera,” I said, pushing a ruby-red radish around my plate. It left a deep pink stain on the white china and I stopped abruptly. “I don’t think you’re selling it very well.”
“One does not attend the opera for the plots,” he said. “The music brings life to even the most wooden of stories. Otni saw himself as singing an aria, I think, but it lacked a certain… believability.”