Chapter 24 Csilla #2
It shouldn’t matter. Ilan had solved his puzzle and would likely find whoever had orchestrated the deaths, and barring a miracle that was the best they could hope for. It was selfish to resent that she wasn’t getting anything out of it.
She stabbed the fabric and nearly pricked her thumb. The task was mostly busywork. Madame Varga had seen her wandering and deemed it aimless, then set her to altering a vest, one fitted for Mihály that could be hidden under a coat if it ended up a mess.
She didn’t sew badly. Pride and a need to think about anything other than her own misery had her focused on the little stitches, the golden fabric smooth on her palms. It caught the lamplight with the sheen of a sunrise.
He was still in mourning blacks and their host would have him dressed in forest green and gold. She bit the inside of her cheek.
‘Come here, and let me check this,’ she said, motioning for him to stand so she could hold the fabric up to him.
He did so, slow and quiet. She found herself missing his easy smiles and sweet words, even as Ilan’s angry warning heated her blood every time she remembered it.
‘You sew well,’ Mihály praised, forced lightness in his tone.
‘I had a lot of practice growing up.’
Sewing habits, altar cloths, and skin had made her fingers dexterous. Another task she wouldn’t be going back to. She placed two more pins, clamped another between her teeth, then set back to work.
But he was staring, and her stitches were suffering for it. She tied off the last thread with a flourishing loop. ‘There.’
He put it on, and she sighed. ‘I know you don’t like it, and I think this is uneven.’
Mihály caught her hand before she could take it off to go back to work, skimming his thumb over her skin.
‘It’s beautiful, Csilla. My not liking it has nothing to do with your handiwork.’
That was fair enough, though her sore fingers would have liked more appreciation. ‘What’s wrong with it then?’
He slipped it off and handed it back to her. She held it up again. It was uneven, but the flaw was slight enough that maybe no one would notice.
‘The only thing wrong with it is where I’m going to wear it to.’
‘Hm? We can’t go anywhere.’ She’d assumed the woman had just wanted to dress him up like a fine horse or carefully crafted doll.
He snorted. ‘Tell the rich about your rules. Those lucky enough to have made it in before closing consider themselves deserving of a distraction. I’m to go with the madame and be quite a centrepiece.’
What kind of people couldn’t stand a few days of austerity when it might mean saving their lives? They had everything they needed on hand.
Unlike Elmere, dying alone.
The fabric suddenly seemed a gleaming shroud.
‘You should come with us,’ Mihály continued, as if it was his decision, as if the frivolity were something that mattered. ‘You have a whole wardrobe of things you can wear.’
Evie’s things. She recoiled, though there was a tiny part of her that was tempted. Church wards didn’t get chances to attend things like balls.
And they shouldn’t want to. She could dress up and go, but it would be another game of pretend.
She’d seen other girls on their way to parties, her arms laden with bandages and pungent with herbs instead of perfume.
They didn’t look like their skirts were heavy, or oil made their hair itch.
They didn’t look like they had anything to lose.
A small, terrible part of her wished she could take that easiness.
‘Even if Ilan doesn’t want to help us, you can find out more about what’s been happening in the other territories. Maybe they know something that can help.’ Probably a lie, but a comforting one.
‘I’d be useless, I don’t even dance.’ The closest she’d ever gotten was twirling Erzsébet, and that fancy had left her with a ripped frock and claw marks in her chest.
‘Dancing is easy,’ Mihály said. ‘Let me teach you.’
She raised a sceptical eyebrow, but he was already pushing away the low table and chairs, creating a dance floor on the pansy-patterned rug.
‘But we don’t have any music—’ She broke off. He looked cheerful again, a little more like the man he pretended to be when others were around. Anything that took the morose look out of his eyes after his wretched experience with the demon was worth indulging in a little.
‘It’s no matter. Come here.’ He held out his hand with a posture that said not to argue.
With a sigh she stood in front of him, holding out her arms. It felt ridiculous. ‘Like this?’
He took one hand in his own and placed the other on his upper arm.
‘You’re very short.’ He jostled his arm a bit, trying to get her to reach and get his hand closer to her waist than her ribs, and she drew herself up to the very top of her height. The crown of her head still barely came up to his shoulder.
‘You’re very tall.’ Her neck ached from looking up at him at this distance.
If she focused on what was uncomfortable, she wouldn’t focus on anything else, like the warm pressure of his hand enclosing her fingers, the fact that if she took a half-step forward she would be laying her head on his chest.
He really was all she had now.
‘Come now, as I count. Right foot back, left foot back, step together . . . One, two, three, one, two, three . . .’
Mihály gave her a quick twirl, her skirts lifting, before pulling her into him.
Too close. He smelled like sweet tobacco, and the thrum of his quickening heartbeat echoed beneath the shirt scratching against her cheek.
She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to feel when dancing with a handsome man, but it probably wasn’t this twist like a stomach full of sour milk.
Or perhaps it was. A lot of what she’d heard made love sound terrible.
Ilan would be yelling – well, speaking strongly – at her right now. She pushed that thought out of her head. His opinions didn’t matter.
‘How did you know?’ she asked. She tried to turn to look back up, but he had her locked to him, too close to even turn her head.
‘Hm?’ His hand had slipped to her lower back.
‘With Evie. How did you know you loved her?’ Maybe there was something she was missing.
Mihály laughed softly and ran his fingertips along her back, the light pressure enough to set her heart racing with fear that he would misunderstand.
‘Let me start at the beginning. With Anica.’ He swallowed, drawing her to the sofa. ‘My sister. We were twins, actually.’
Csilla nodded slightly, not sure what to say. Tamas had mentioned children, plural, though it hadn’t seemed right to pry. Mihály didn’t seem to need her encouragement and continued.
‘We were almost four when she died, it was just after they’d realised what I could do,’ he said.
‘I don’t have many memories of her. I remember her more by her absence if that makes any sense.
My family wasn’t wealthy until I came along, and Anica and I shared everything.
’ He was staring into the distance, no longer even in the room.
‘I don’t think I even knew we were separate people until she was gone. ’
His fingers worried at the fabric of his trousers, nails picking at a catch in the cloth, rubbing the ripped threads until a little hole appeared. It was a good thing she already had thread.
‘What’s your first memory?’ he asked, and she blinked at the change of subject. ‘Was it when you realised you were different?’
‘I always knew that.’ It was as much her as her name, mentioned so often it was never not a part of her. She tilted her head, sorting through hazy glimpses of the tumbles and joys of childhood.
‘I was hungry.’
The smell of the pie was the clearest thing.
She must have been visiting a home, toddling after the Faithful who cared for her, and there had been a pie, cool enough that baby hands had felt comfortable grabbing for it.
And a woman laughed and told her she was a pretty thing and cut her a piece, a few of the cooked apples falling through to the floor.
Then, luxury of luxuries, she gave her a second slice when she cried for more.
‘You’re smiling over being hungry?’ Mihály was looking at her now, brows raised.
She blushed at how he laughed at her, harder when she realised how silly it was.
‘No. Someone gave me a piece of pie. I don’t think anyone had ever given me anything like that before. I don’t remember who it was or even where I was, but it was delicious.’
Even now her mouth watered, and her heart ached. It was a lovely thing to be fully satisfied by something as simple as pie.
‘That’s sweet.’ But he sounded more disapproving than charmed, and she flinched with embarrassment again. She should have picked something more important to share.
‘Why ask?’
He gave a half-shrug.
‘It’s interesting to me. I don’t remember how much I loved Anica.
My first memory is my mother screaming at me to save her.
I told you I didn’t have a terribly nice childhood, though I suppose I’m thankful now.
That was the first time I realised I could touch something beyond our world.
That it wasn’t just life and death and nothing, though I didn’t realise the importance until later.
Not that it mattered to anyone.’ His words were quick, his eyes glassy with too much white around them, on the edge of panic.
Csilla’s breath caught. ‘You were a baby.’
Before they’d moved her to the cathedral, she’d taken care of the toddlers at the orphanage, wiping up messes and making sure they always had someone to nap on. They were blameless.
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘When I met Evie, from the first second I saw her it was like I wasn’t alone anymore. Every day I was with her, everything was brighter.’
And losing her must have been like being ripped in half again.
‘We don’t have to wait, you know.’ Mihály’s voice was low, rolling. ‘She’s close. We can do it now.’
Csilla started, heart skipping. ‘Now? But you said you didn’t want to use your own blood again.’