Power & Majesty (3 page)

S
even years ago, when Velody first came to Aufleur to become an apprentice, she had thought she would never get used to the place. Now she was twenty-one and this city was home. Aufleur was so much larger than Tierce, and grander. For every festival she thought she knew, there were dozens of extra traditions to learn. The month of Felicitas, for instance, in the middle of summer, had fifteen days entirely devoted to sacred games. Fifteen days! It seemed as though the city should screech to a halt with such frivolity, and yet everyone around her took it for granted.

It was a steaming hot morning when Velody climbed the Avleurine hill to the Temple of the Market Saints with her two friends, all of them wearing their apprentice collars.

‘Spare a cake for a poor penitent, demoiselles?’ begged a shabby man beside the path.

Delphine cradled her basket protectively. ‘Are you mad? I sold my body for these.’

Velody and Rhian laughed.

‘Really sold your body?’ asked Rhian.

‘I had to kiss Saul the baker’s assistant,’ said Delphine with a shudder. ‘I’m traumatised by the entire matter, and every day in the future when someone says “Oh, Delphine can get the honey cakes,” I will remind you of my pain.’

‘Believe me,’ said Velody. ‘Everyone from the Verticordia to the Aurian Gate knows of your pain.’

‘Are you implying that I complain a lot?’ asked Delphine. She shoved the basket at Rhian. ‘This is too heavy. You carry it.’

It had taken time for the three of them to become real friends. Delphine did not stop being a snooty cow overnight—if anything, she was unspeakably worse for the first few months in the Apprentice House, cutting down every friendly overture with an acidic remark.

Then the machine had arrived. All the demmes had gaped as it was delivered—a wrought-iron beauty with treadle and table, needles so sharp they hurt your heart. It was Delphine’s fifteenth birthday present from her parents.

She stared at it, stricken. Later, Velody found her kicking the thing, and they had to call in Rhian to make a cold poultice for her foot.

‘They don’t understand,’ Delphine muttered. ‘I can’t use it. Mistress Sincy makes sacred ribbons—for garlands and other state festivals. They have to be stitched by hand, that’s what she’s teaching me. It’s what I want her to teach me. I’m not wasting seven years just to run up hair ornaments for the factory girls.’

‘It’s a beautiful machine though,’ Velody said enviously.

‘You have it,’ said Delphine in one of a long line of impulsive gestures.

‘I couldn’t,’ said Velody, shocked at the thought. ‘It’s so valuable.’

‘What do I care about that? You must take it. I’ll only lose my temper and set fire to it, you know I will.’

Rhian spoke up, ‘You can’t burn metal.’

‘I can find a way,’ Delphine said grandly, and then the three of them had laughed.

It all seemed so long ago.

The Temple of the Market Saints was crowded. Every citizen sacrificed to their saint of choice on this day, but with the biggest market week of the year so close, every merchant and craftsman in the city was doing his or her duty by the Market Saints. It was nearly noon by the time Velody, Delphine and Rhian squeezed their way into a nook near one of the temple fires. Delphine shared out the honey cakes with due reverence, taking the best ones for herself.

Velody wrapped her cakes in a hemmed square of linen she had dyed a rich green. ‘Take this offering with my grateful thanks for the year past and ahead,’ she said to the saints. ‘Be kind to me, if it please you, and guide Madame Mauris’s hand to release me from my apprenticeship with full honours.’

Rhian put out three stems of bright carmentines and stacked her cakes beside them. ‘Keep my family well and safe back home, and may the year ahead be bright and fortunate,’ she said, bowing her head as she spoke.

Delphine placed her cakes on the stone shelf and laid a violet silk ribbon atop them. ‘I don’t want to go home to Tierce when my apprenticeship is up,’ she said firmly. ‘I don’t want to marry the fat old man my father has lined up for me, I don’t want to leave my friends, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life sitting idle in a drawing room. I expect you to
fix
it for me.’ She gave the offerings a sharp push and they burned with a hiss.

Velody was quite proud of herself for not laughing. ‘We should be getting back to the Apprentice House,’ she said instead.

‘Well,’ said Rhian as the three of them emerged into the hot summer sunshine, ‘while Delphine was selling her body for honey cakes, I fetched our post from the Noces Gate—letters from Tierce.’ She delved into her satchel. ‘One from your family, Velody. And one for you from my brother,’ she added, wrinkling her nose.

‘Another letter from Cyniver,’ Delphine crowed, snatching it from Rhian. ‘I quite thought he’d forgotten about you this week. Of course, it must take him at least a week to produce the letter, what with the three rough drafts, and then the careful calligraphy, and the blotting, and the corrections, and the precise folding of the paper—’

Velody grabbed her letter and tucked it away to read later. ‘Trust me,’ she said. ‘There’s something to be said for a man who knows how to do a job thoroughly.’

‘Have mercy on a sister’s ears!’ wailed Rhian. ‘Honestly, why you had to take up with him!’

‘She’d already smooched every redhead in this city,’ said Delphine. ‘Obviously she had to write home for reinforcements.’

Velody elbowed her and Delphine shrieked. ‘Leave off, will you! I’m delicate. Anything for me?’

‘Three,’ said Rhian, handing them over.

Delphine stared at the seal of the first letter. ‘Father.’

Velody pulled her off the path to sit on the grass. ‘You told your family about our plans?’ she asked.

‘To work the markets until we’ve saved enough for our own premises?’ Delphine looked hollow. ‘Oh, yes.’

Rhian reached over. ‘Shall I read it for you?’

‘No! There’s no point. It will say exactly the same as the others.’ Delphine tore the envelope open and scanned the words on the thick, expensive paper. ‘Well then,’ she said and scrunched the letter in one hand.

‘Are you disowned?’ Velody couldn’t help asking.

‘Not yet. He’s giving me one last chance to change my mind. If I come home by the Ides, without completing my apprenticeship, all will be forgiven.’

Rhian rested her chin on Delphine’s shoulder. ‘And if not?’

‘He’s writing to Mistress Sincy to withdraw his financial support.’

‘That’s not a problem,’ said Velody, doing the sums in her head. ‘We’ve less than a month to go. Rhian and I have enough savings to cover your board until then.’

‘And what about the licence to trade, and the bond on the room we were to rent, and the silks I ordered from the Zafiran mercantile?’ Delphine demanded. ‘I’d pledged to cover all that with my inheritance from Grandmere, but Father won’t release the funds. He says he’ll have me declared incompetent if that’s what it takes. Every banker in Tierce is in his club. I have nothing!’

Velody sighed and put her feet in Delphine’s lap. ‘Thimblehead. You have us. We’ll sort something out.’

‘And there’s always the Market Saints,’ said Rhian, murmuring into Delphine’s hair. ‘I’m sure you’ve frightened them into submission and they’re working on the problem even now.’

‘Read us something from Cyniver,’ Delphine commanded, toying with her other letters. ‘Cheer me up.’

Velody blushed. ‘No. It’s private.’

Rhian rolled her eyes. ‘I’ll stick my fingers in my ears and sing if it’s dirty. No reason why Delphine should miss out on the good stuff.’

‘He wants to marry me.’

There was a long pause from the others. Then Rhian pounced, hugging Velody madly and squealing—Rhian, who had never squealed in her life.

Still a little stunned, Velody raised her eyes to meet Delphine’s cool blue gaze.

‘Well,’ said her friend, a few moments later. ‘That’s you settled then.’

The thing was, Velody thought, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be settled.

V
elody stared out the window of the rattling train all the way home, wishing she had brought some piecework to keep her hands busy. She kept going over and over the words in her head, trying to make sense of them.

There had to be an easy way to tell your young man that you loved him, but didn’t want to marry him.

Her neck itched where the apprentice collar had been removed yesterday. She was a qualified dressmaker, finally. Rhian and Delphine had been released with honours as well. She should be with them, celebrating, finding somewhere to live, filing a claim for a market stall. Instead, she was going home.

She stepped off the train, the thick summer air blowing in her face along with steam and dust from the platform. The borrowed coat from Delphine was too warm for Tierce, which was further inland than Aufleur.

Velody searched the platform. The crowd bustled with ladies in full-length gowns and gentlemen in those wide-brimmed hats she had almost forgotten about. Aufleur must be starting to feel like home, because the fashions there made more sense to her.

Finally she spotted a dark head of curls and waved frantically to her brother.

‘Needles!’ Sage announced, catching Velody up in a bear hug. ‘Finally made it back, eh? Not too prissy for us? What are you wearing?’ He eyed her skirt with a wariness that was only half put on.

‘My knees are covered,’ she said defensively.

‘Only just, missy.’

‘Sage, I hate to break it to you, but I’m not the only demme in the world who has ankles.’

‘You’re the only one in this city who’s showing ’em,’ he muttered, taking her canvas bag from her as they walked along the platform, Velody’s smaller arm tucked into his larger one. He limped as he walked, but it was less noticeable than it had been the last time she came home for a visit.

‘How are you?’ Velody asked, checking him over. There was colour in his cheeks, though not as much as she was used to.

‘Well enough,’ he said, shying away from her questions. ‘Got some work at the clock factory. No heavy lifting.’

‘That’s wonderful.’ He must be nearly thirty now, the eldest of them. She knew it had driven him up the wall to be stuck in the family bakery, surrounded by flour and hot ovens, having to put up with Papa’s way of doing everything, from turning the dough to stacking the shelves. ‘You enjoy it?’

‘It’s a living,’ Sage grunted. ‘It’s mine, anyway.’

‘And you’re not…’

‘Naught stronger than ale,’ he said in the heavy voice of a put-upon brother. ‘Still.’ Then he smirked out the side of his mouth at her. ‘Megora wouldn’t have it any other way.’

‘Oh, Megora is it?’

Velody’s mouth was still open from the teasing laugh when she saw another familiar figure, a slender man with spectacles and a formal suit, standing uncomfortably by the station door. ‘Oh,’ she said softly. Cyniver. She hadn’t
told him she was coming home, not wanting to give away any hint at what she had to say to him. Obviously someone couldn’t keep a secret.

Sage jabbed her with an elbow, looking far too pleased with himself. ‘I told Mam you were taking the later train. Reckon you’ve got an hour—and if she finds out, you tell her I was with you every step of the way. Sisters need chaperones, to keep their reputations nice.’

‘You’ve done this sort of thing before,’ Velody said dryly, now knowing how it was her sisters managed to get away with what they did.

‘Just call me an old romantic,’ said her brother.

Cyniver and Velody walked along the docks slowly, getting closer and closer to Cheapside, listening to the cries of the boatmen as they steered their wares back and forth.

‘Everything’s so bright here,’ she said softly. ‘I’d forgotten.’

‘It’s the stone,’ he said in the voice that meant he was about to start lecturing on something he had learned from a book. She had missed that about him. ‘They don’t have any sandstone mines near Aufleur, that’s why all the buildings are so dark. Brown and grey and black.’

‘I’ve been gone so long,’ she said.

Cyniver said nothing for a few moments, and they just walked.

‘You can say no,’ he said finally. ‘I won’t be heartbroken. Well, I will. But I don’t want you to say yes just to be nice.’

Velody did her best not to laugh at how earnest he was. ‘I want to say yes,’ she said. ‘Not to be nice; I really do. But I can’t leave Aufleur. Not to get married. My life’s just starting. I’ve worked so hard for it all. I want to live with Delphine and Rhian and make dresses.’ She sighed, not wanting to make eye contact.

‘So,’ Cyniver said. ‘You’re choosing a city over me.’

Velody was a little startled at the dry note in his voice. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘It had better be the city, then.’

She blinked. He didn’t seem overly upset. ‘What do you mean?’

Cyniver took both her hands in his. Her palms were still sticky from the train, but his skin felt cool. ‘I mean, there are bookbinders in Aufleur. I can get a good recommendation—I’m sure I could find work. Better than that…I don’t want to bind books my whole life. I want to draw buildings. Design new buildings. They don’t have to be made of sandstone. Grey bricks will do just as well.’

She had forgotten how sweet he was. How had she forgotten that?

‘You’re coming with me?’ Velody whispered.

‘Of course. And maybe…if you don’t want to get married yet…then in a year or two…’

She flung her arms around him, face buried in his neck. ‘Maybe,’ she said in his ear. ‘In a year or two. Yes.’

Dame Threedy from next door was walking past with a basket of fish and pretended not to see them, though she walked faster until she was around the corner and away. Mam would have heard about this before Velody got herself home.

‘You’d better give me the ring,’ she sighed. ‘It will distract them nicely.’

T
hings were coming together surprisingly well. Delphine, it turned out, had an aunt who thoroughly disapproved of a demoiselle being disowned for daring to work for a living. Aunt Marcialle declared that her own first marriage had been ‘an appalling exercise’ and that as Delphine was the first Ingiers woman in three generations to ‘show an ounce of gumption’ she was going to support her bid for freedom. She had given Delphine a house.

It was a small house on Via Silviana, with two rooms below—the shop-workroom in front and kitchen at the back—and three above, with a wash-pump in the tiny yard behind. It was sandwiched into a street full of similar little shops and residences only two blocks from the Piazza Nautilia (with the best public baths in the city) and two streets away from the bustling merchant district of Giacosa. All this, and no rent to pay. It could be a shop one day, if they earned enough from the market to set it up.

Too good to be true
, Velody found herself thinking one nox as she put the finishing touches on a brown and gold harvest tunic by lantern light. She squashed the thought almost as soon as she had it, but the damage was done.
If the saints tumbled this into our laps, what do they expect in return?

Cyniver was coming to Aufleur soon. Whenever Velody thought of him, her stomach melted just a little. He had already made inquiries about work with the best bookbinders in the city, and had insisted their betrothal could be as long as she liked. Or he could move into the house straightaway if she would marry him now…

Velody had loved other boys here and there, nothing as serious as this. But she had never been able to imagine herself married. She could imagine being married to Cyniver.

On the few occasions they had managed to spend the nox together, she did not dream.

Velody could never remember her dreams, except for brief impressions—herself, walking in a noxgown. Sometimes she was underground, in an odd ruined city. Sometimes she was running. Sometimes she was up high, staring at the sky, at the stars, at other colours…

There were some mornings she almost caught a real memory of her dream—a snatch of dialogue in a familiar voice. A laugh that made her shiver, or hardened her nipples for no sensible reason.

Yes. Marrying Cyniver would solve that too. With him at her side, the dreams would be gone.

That nox, her dream was different. She was not in Aufleur, for a start. She was in her noxgown, running through the places of Tierce. She could not find any of the streets she knew. Where was Cheapside? Where were the docks? Where was her family’s bakery? Bolts of light fell from the sky, smashing the boats and the canal walls to pieces. She looked up and saw shapes, like people only not, flailing against glowing tendrils of fire and ice. It was as if the sky itself was attacking the city. One by one, the figures in the sky vanished in bursts of light, until they were all gone.
No one left to defend us. Defend us from what?

As Velody ran, the golden buildings peeled away from the cobblestones and were dragged into the sky. She stared in horror as the bridge broke into pieces, each of them sucked upwards with a hideous noise.

She could hear screaming, and it could be anyone, but her heart told her it was her brothers and sisters, being swallowed by the sky.

A body fell hard in front of her, a woman in black leathers who burst apart into a scattered heap of dead black rats.

Velody woke with a start. She had fallen asleep in her chair. The harvest tunic slipped to the floor as she leaped up and ran to the kitchen door.

She was still in Aufleur. It was just a dream. She knew that. And yet when she unlatched the door and stepped outside in her bare feet, she expected to see…something. Some sign that a city had been torn up by its roots and destroyed.

I have to remember this dream
, she told herself fiercely.
I have to remember, I have to remember
.

How could she forget the sight of Tierce—the city of her childhood—being ripped apart like it was made of paper?

She stood there, shivering in the darkness, holding on to what she knew.

‘Velody?’ said a voice, some time later. Rhian came out, carrying a quilt with her. ‘What are you doing out here? It’s only just dawn.’

Dawn. The dreams always disappeared in daylight. Velody turned, opening her mouth to tell Rhian:
Tierce. Something has happened to Tierce. My family…your family…Cyniver…

‘Your brother,’ Velody said finally. Yes, that. Focus on Cyniver, on his gentle hands and that smile he hid behind his spectacles when he was amused.
Remember
. She did not know why it was so important, only that it was.

Rhian looked confused. ‘I don’t have a brother.’

Velody stared at her as the courtyard lightened slowly around them both. Rhian didn’t have a brother. Of course she didn’t. None of them had families—not Delphine, nor Rhian, nor Velody. It was one of the things that bound them together—they had no one else.

‘I forgot,’ she said in wonder.

‘Were you dreaming?’ Rhian asked with an odd look on her face. ‘Whatever it was, Velody, it wasn’t real. You’re working too hard.’

‘That must be it,’ Velody agreed. She allowed Rhian to lead her back inside.

Days later, when she found a collection of letters written to her by a man named Cyniver from a city called Tierce, Velody threw them away without hesitation. The words meant nothing to her.