Chapter 9
Present Day
Ciciley House, the teahouse where I was to meet Pretoria later that day, was attached to the Harrow Grand Museum of Ancient History.
It was on an island on the west river and graced by Old Harren architecture, her grand triple domes of green copper presiding over the lower roofs of the finest businesses and galleries and bursts of burgundy trees.
Leaves blew across my path as I ascended the stairs of the museum.
Pretoria was not due to arrive for an hour, so I stalked lavish halls of statues and paintings, stared into the blank eyes of mummies, and stood in the shadow of the great Illiope Facade—stolen brick-by-brick from a contested island in the South Sea.
I had seen it all a hundred times before, and not simply because the museum was free to the public, and I had little coin to spare for other diversions.
The place drew me. Artifacts, ruins, the weight of history—it always had affected me. A trait of my kind, they said. The vast layers of memory that lingered on dry wood and painted stone, carefully restored jewelry and rusted weapons, drew an Eventide Entwined like a warm fire on a cool night.
Most items were out of my reach, contained behind glass, and their history so long and layered I could see little without the aid of genuine twilight.
But I trailed my fingertips across the Illiope Facade when none of the guards were looking, collecting whispers.
Impressions. The feel of a world beyond Harrow, beyond my own.
The facade ended at the Weapons of Antiquity hall.
Beneath a ceiling thick with moldings of mythical creatures at amorous play, I stared at the sword with which the last Entwined Queen, Alessandra, had been beheaded twenty years ago by General Baffin.
I had no desire to touch that particular item, nor glean its memories.
The sight soured my already somber mood, so I wandered into the Ancient West wing.
There I perused displays of Ummani art as tied to my childhood as my father’s laugh or my mother’s scolding, and my uneasy soul settled somewhat.
As much as we had travelled in my youth, following my ambassador mother’s lead, Ummi was where our home had been, and its comfort all the more valuable for the rare occasions we were there.
It was here, as I sat under the reconstructed ceiling of an Ummani gazebo, all intricately carved and painted wood and memories of a bright, airy coastline, that Pretoria appeared.
“Hello, Tillie.”
My head shot up. She sat beside me, as settled and calm as if she had been there for the last half hour—which, in Pretoria’s case, she possibly had.
As a Starlight Adept, she had evidently detached herself from the flow of time in the broader world, arriving hidden in plain sight and settling in while I stewed, unaware.
It was my own failure. A childhood full of unpleasant surprises and spoiled secrets should have taught me to expect such things.
Now I hissed between my teeth, fighting between rage and an irrational, melancholic gladness at seeing her. “You hag! Where is the box?”
Pretoria arched her finely plucked black brows at me. “Pardon me?”
“The artifact you stole from Mr. Stoke’s safe,” I snapped, ignoring a host of observations and memories as I looked at her face. She had scarcely aged, her fine brown skin—a gift from her father, my mother’s second husband—as smooth and unblemished as it had always been. “And the money.”
Pretoria shifted her hips so her honey-hazel eyes could search my face. “You are inordinately angry with me, and for no reason! I have no clue what you are on about.”
“Did you rob Mr. Stoke?”
She recoiled, so taken aback that I almost regretted the accusation. “Rob Mr. Stoke? No! He’s been like a father to you. I would never hurt you so.”
Indignation and suspicion tinged my anger. “How would you know? You have been—well, the last postcard was from Lorva. Who were you and your henchmen—”
“And women,” Pretoria interjected, deadpan. “We are very modern.”
“—robbing there?”
“You really have a low opinion of me.”
“Do not forget you dragged me around the world for two years, I know how you live.” I began to tug off my gloves, keeping our gazes fixed on one another. “Did you steal from Mr. Stoke?”
“Piffle!” she scoffed. “What would he have worth stealing?”
My glove came off and I seized her exposed wrist. Before she could so much as gasp, I pulled memories from her flesh like words from a book.
One, I saw Pretoria following me through the museum.
Two, Pretoria hanging off the end of a tram, high-laced boot poised beneath mustard-colored skirts, ready to step off in a busy street.
Three, Pretoria practicing a disarming smile in the mirror.
Four, breakfasting late at a hotel. And five, rising from a bed with not one, but three dozing paramours.
Pretoria’s nails dug into my wrist so hard my fingers convulsed. The remembrances broke off and I found myself bent forward with my arm wrenched behind my back.
I may have trumped my sisters in blade and firearms at the academy, but Pretoria, I painfully recalled, had more than earned her stars in hand-to-hand combat.
“Tori—” I wheezed into my knees.
“How dare you!” Pretoria pushed me further forward.
“How dare you break into Mr. Stoke’s office!”
“How dare you read my memories!”
“You are not stable, Pretoria!” I shrieked.
She bent forward so that I could see her, puffed out her cheeks and blew a raspberry at me, the expression a drastic contradiction to her lace collar, pearl earrings, and perfect chignon.
“Me? Horsefeathers. Madge is the unstable one, you skulking little toad, even Mother agreed on that. Now, I am here to help you, if you will listen. Will you?”
“My arm…”
“I shall release you if you swear never to do that again.”
I let out an exasperated whine.
“Swear it!”
“No!”
“Fine.” Pretoria released me suddenly. “I should be grateful for an honest answer, considering your entire life is a lie. You must have gotten very good at it, deception and secrecy.”
“I have had to earn my living. I could not simply run away like you, Miss Castell.” I threw back the name of her most common false identity and shrunk away, clutching my arm and eyeing her like a fox might eye a wolf. My hat was askew, yellow silk flowers dangling in the corner of my vision.
“Oh piffle! I did not mean your name. What is a name anyway? A passing fancy.” Pretoria shook her head in exasperation, then, resettling herself, added casually, “By the way, I am Russel this time around. Castell is too well known… I am considering having her die in a mysterious accident as my true self did. Or something tragic. Saving a child from a fire, I should think. I do love a good redemption.”
“Pretoria, did you steal from Mr. Stoke, that day you left me the note?”
“No,” she said, and this time I almost believed her. “But I am probably acquainted with whoever did. And like I said, I came here to help you.”
“Help me with what?”
Just then, a shadow peered inside the gazebo. I stilled and Pretoria turned the male intruder a slow, unruffled glance.
“Ladies,” a faceless museumgoer said in apology, glanced around the room without much interest, and moved on.
“Did he hear us?” I hissed.
“No,” Pretoria returned, not bothering to explain why. She had likely had us in a continuous skew of time, separating us just slightly from the flow in the rest of the museum. It was, to her, the most banal of magics, and she had probably done it without even noticing.
“I see,” I said coolly, reaching up to fix my hat. “Let us go to tea. I am starving, and peevish, and in need of something strong. Then you are going to answer all my questions.”
* * *
Soon we occupied a corner table in the museum’s café.
Above us spread a ceiling that depicted the fall of empires and mythological scenes in signature art styles from the last four centuries, from round-bellied and downcast pre-imperial processions to smooth-lined and largely naked interpretations of Old Harrow, and the geometric, bold lines of New Harrow.
A great chandelier of stained glass illuminated all, permitting the two dozen diners to consume their tea and cakes—and in the case of a table of boisterous Kessans, heavily laced coffee—in a wash of warm light.
“I do love it here,” Pretoria commented as she eased her willowy frame into a chair. Her gown was a lively mix of oranges and yellows, draped in a style that echoed her father’s Ummani origins while nodding to current Harren fashion. “Now, tell me what it is you think I have stolen?”
The waiter appeared, giving me a moment to think as my older sister ordered me a pot of tea and: “Cake and coffee, like those Kessans. I do enjoy the Continentals, so exotic.”
The waiter nodded politely, no doubt classifying the both of us as decidedly un-cosmopolitan, and vanished.
Once he was gone, Pretoria looked at me promptingly. “So?”
“You stole an artifact from Mr. Stoke’s safe. Now he is missing and I am to take the fall for not delivering it to its owner.” Fatigue beset me like a shifting breeze and I added, “And Madge is here.”
Pretoria’s pleasant expression faltered. That glimpse of the woman beneath her mask, the same betrayed sister that I, too, harbored in my heart, told me she had not known. “Smudgey?”
Pretoria’s use of Madge’s childhood nickname—earned from years of charcoal-smudged fingers as she studied her art—nearly upended me. “Yes. I saw her by the river with a handler, or her current husband. He is an Adept, in any case. I did not recognize him.”
“Odd. Perhaps he is an import. Did she see you?” Pretoria asked, lowering her voice slightly as the waiter produced our order and departed again.
I shook my head.
“A small mercy.” She selected a slice of thick chocolate cake and deposited it on her plate. “She is very possibly here for you, you do realize that? You are making quite a mess of living incognito, Til.”