I released Alba’s wrist and swung the covers away. Cold air buffeted me instantly, and my teeth began to chatter. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. But someone is throwing rocks at our windows, so I presume there is either something of import about to happen, or something already has.”
“Do we open the window?”
“Is there a better alternative?” Alba snorted, and drew her thick woolen bedgown tighter around her shift.
I was already wearing a quilted bedgown and petticoat to sleep in—I couldn’t shake the damp cold of Fen even between featherbeds and wool blankets. I padded to the window and cracked the shutters, just a sliver.
A figure stood in the middle of the garden below, another rock primed to toss in his hand. I squinted into the pale moonlight, threw wide the shutters, and opened the window.
“Hyrd?” I whispered.
“Bad news, must hurry.”
“I’m coming,” I said.
“Wait,” Alba hissed. “Who is he? What if he means you ill?”
“Now you’re cautious,” I countered, throwing my cloak around my shoulders. “He’s one of the mill workers. He… made my acquaintance, he and several of his comrades.”
“Comrades. Like-minded folks, then?”
“Indeed.”
“Then I’m coming, too.” We made as little noise as we could tiptoeing down the hall and outside. The night air was bracing, and I started shivering almost immediately despite the heavy wool cloak.
“Hyrd, this is Alba,” I whispered quickly. “Alba, Hyrd.”
“I am aware of the Kvys holy lady.” He nodded once in greeting. I would have laughed at his title for Alba if his eyes hadn’t been so serious. “You are in grave danger, Lady Sophie.”
“What’s the meaning of that?” Alba asked crisply. Her manner was efficient, businesslike, but I could sense the tremor of fear behind her clipped words.
“Some of the rylkfen talk. They say you spread unrest.”
“I’m sure I do, but I promise it’s entirely unintentional,” I said with a forced smile.
“This is true enough. They know that they will find no proof of their fears. But they want their factories running smoothly again. They do not believe we are—how do you say?” His brow creased. “Capable, yes. Capable of resisting on our own. They think you are causing it, even though they have no proof. But they know, as well—you cast charms.”
Deeper cold than even the damp Fenian night seeped through me.
“What does that matter?” Alba asked, even more clipped than before.
“They will bring charges. Tomorrow.”
“False charges,” Alba said. I bit my lips together, clamping my trembling jaw shut.
“It may not matter. If enough of the rylkfen are against her.”
My teeth chattered when I tried to speak. “How do you know this?”
“A servant in Master Hendrik’s household. They met there, tonight, the rylkfen of Rylke. They talk very loudly while she served the wine.”
“Men like that never consider that the people they keep under their thumb don’t like being squashed,” Alba muttered. “Very well. I believe you. Go, get away now, before you raise anyone’s suspicions being here. Wouldn’t do to get caught conversing with some local revolutionary, would it?” She shot me a knowing look and dragged me back inside before Hyrd had turned the corner.
“Well then. Get dressed. Something to travel in. Boots. Not those damn slippers.”
“Alba—”
“Trust me.” She whispered through clenched teeth, and I could barely make out her face in the dim lamplight. “I have an idea.”
8
I DRESSED QUICKLY, FOR ONCE THE COLD OF THE MEAGERLY HEATED inn supplanted by a deeper, more invasive chill. My throat tightened and my teeth clamped around my tongue, finally ceasing their chattering. To be accused of casting here in Fen—accused of sorcery and witchcraft and abomination—would mean immediate imprisonment and a very serious trial. Though I couldn’t imagine how any accusers intended to prove my magic without using and admitting to use of magic themselves, a guilty verdict meant execution—drowning in the waters off Fen’s dark cliffs.
The thought of the white crests closing over my head and the cold deep swallowing me whole prompted me to move quickly, and I plucked fresh stockings and a wool petticoat from my trunk, dressing in the dark without a thought to whether the ensemble matched. As I laced my jacket closed, the bodkin caught on an unraveling eyelet and tangled with the silk floss; I simply forced the dull-pointed needle through the fabric like a pin through a cushion to finish later.
“Where?” My whisper was too loud in the silence, stark and bright in the dark.
“I have an acquaintance who can help us.” Alba shouldered a small pack and handed me a coarse linen market wallet. “Bring spare socks.”
With haphazard haste, I threw spare shifts and stockings into the market wallet, swept my correspondence and notebooks into the bottom of one side of the sack, and, knowing Alba wouldn’t waste time arguing, tossed the slippers on top. A thin, nasal exhale was her only comment on the choice.
Nothing else in my trunks was of any particular value to me—some lucky chambermaid would, I hoped, claim the drab clothes for her own wardrobe. I glanced once more around the room, ensuring that I hadn’t left anything incriminating. No letters, no notes on charm casting, no logbooks detailing charmed yardage of wool. Then I drew my thick wool short cloak around already shaking shoulders and followed Alba into the night.
Alba didn’t speak as we cut through the inn’s sparse kitchen garden and slipped down a narrow alley that reeked of yesterday’s fish. The ruts in the bricks were indiscernible from shadows in the cold moonlight, and more than once I tripped, earning terse exhales and a firm hand from Alba, who somehow managed to sail over the uneven terrain without so much as a stumble.
The alley widened into a road and sloped downhill, toward Rylke Cove. Ships bobbed in the moonlight, cold water lapping their sides. One of these, then, to retreat.
“Alba, where…?”
“Tsk!” She clicked and shook her head. Silence, then. Silence, and trusting that she knew what she was doing.
I saw why—a Fenian Night Guard patrolled the street ahead. In a thick gray greatcoat and miter cap, carrying a halberd, he kept watch over the intersection of two major streets near the center of Rylke’s wharfside district. Strict decency laws kept the Fenians from carousing in taverns all night, or gambling, or even being out without official business past midnight. The Night Guard ensured compliance and watched over the rich storehouse of merchants’ goods near the wharf, as well.
He turned on his heel, crisp and deliberate even though surely he believed no one was watching. Alba’s exhale was white mist in the moonlight. The cloud of her breath said what she couldn’t: We were trapped here as long as the Night Guard patrolled this intersection.
She turned to me, eyebrow rising into a question. I bit my lip and tried to calm my thoughts into coherence, knowing what she asked. What could I do? My casting wasn’t like the magic in a folktale, with sorcerer’s invisibility spells or fairy sleeping dust. I spun some good luck from the ether, the bright gold winding around my fingers like yard. Alba squinted; I knew her vision for the charmed light was poor, and I drew more, stronger magic into the charm. She saw it and nodded.