Chapter 17
A Note to the Reader:
In Which I Take Flight
I escaped the Guild on a humid summer night, seven months after Lewis’s and my engagement.
He was the instrument of my freedom, for in his company I was permitted to leave the Guild’s fortress at Kesterlee and indulge in a supposedly romantic evening at the theater in Harrow city.
This, I later understood, was part of Pretoria’s grand scheme for my liberation.
I use the words ‘escape’ and ‘liberation’—let the reader not be misled. I was entirely unaware of the events that would unfold that night. As such, kidnapping is a more precise term.
Lewis did not seem himself that night. We had rarely seen one another since we were engaged, though we both lived at Kesterlee.
The fortress is something of a miniature kingdom, a small town in which several hundred mages lodged and worked, waited upon by human and Affinate servants.
But we had our occupations, and Lewis was frequently travelling.
At that point he served as a Bronze Scribe for the Mage Regal—the Guild’s chief council member in residence.
I assisted in the Guild’s extensive archives, as Eventide mages often do, with the end goal of becoming an Archivist. These placements enabled us to be, generally, closer together in the interim between engagement and marriage, which the Guild considered profitable.
I am straying from the point, however. On to my kidnapping/liberation.
Lewis was not himself that night. He sat in silence across from me as our carriage cut across the mist-strewn hills and twilight settled in. The trees and earth and rock were still hot from the heat of the day, but the breeze off the distant sea was cool.
Unfortunately, we received little of it.
The carriage itself was stuffy and smelled of old perfume.
I leaned forward to open the little window and the twilight spilled across my throat, exposed collarbones, and a rather generous—and intentional—expanse of bosom.
My threads ignited, twining across my skin in a pleasant prickling.
I felt his eyes on me. I sat back and met his gaze with a half-smile. “Are you well?”
I had hoped to catch admiration in his eyes, but his focus was on my threads, and was sadly clinical. He raised his attention to my face. “I am, only distracted. My apologies. How are you, Ottilie?”
“Well enough,” I said. “Where were you and the Mage Regal, these last few weeks? Can you say?”
“Harrow.” Lewis settled back into his bench a little, though his posture was still immaculate. He looked very fine in his dress uniform, with its Guild bars. “I was approached by Major Barristan about a new position, abroad.”
I could not conceal my unhappy surprise. “Abroad? Abroad where? Why would he ask you that now?”
“He was unclear, but it would be some years away. Time enough for my current duties.” He smiled a little to soften the practicality of that description, which obviously included me, our pending marriage, and expected attempts at cultivating magelings.
I was grateful I did not blush. We spoke often enough on the topic.
“Is it a position you would enjoy?”
He nodded. “I would. Very much. It would involve a great deal of travel. I would see the world, and be out from under the Guild’s thumb.”
Lewis, despite his connections to the Rogue Pretoria, rarely spoke of the Guild with any negativity. From him, this phrasing was tantamount to revolt.
I was happy to hear it. My adverse feelings towards the Guild were strong, but there were times I feared Lewis was too comfortable at Kesterlee.
“Is this a position I could accompany you to?” I asked. “If I am not with child. If we… reach that juncture.”
Something different entered his expression. I might have called it pity, or concern, but Lewis was not an easy man to read.
We both jostled in our seats as the carriage went over a bump in the road. There was a crack, and a shouted curse from our driver.
Lewis, rather than look startled, let out a long breath.
The carriage stopped, and dread crept up my spine.
“Lewis?” I asked lowly.
He cleared his throat, opened his mouth to say something, then seemed to give up. “I was not opposed to our future, if that was within Guild walls,” he said, instead. “We would have made a good go of things, I am sure. I hope we will meet again someday, Ottilie. Do not fear for me.”
I gaped at him. “What?”
The carriage door opened. A rifle mouth appeared and levelled at Lewis, accompanied by an unfamiliar voice. “Out!”
Lewis gave me one last look, then complied. I stared at the empty doorway and the slice of misty forest night for an instant, then started to go after him.
Another figure climbed up into the carriage and sat across from me. In trousers, loose jacket, and a low cap, Pretoria’s lean frame might have passed for a man from a distance, but up close there was no true disguise.
My sister tore off a false moustache with theatrical gusto and tossed it out the window. The carriage door closed as shouts and gunshots took over outside, and the carriage rattled back into movement.
“They will make a good show,” she promised me, beaming. “Lewis will be under no suspicion. Hello, dear sister.”
“You are taking me from the Guild,” I surmised.
“I am. I promised to, eventually. Why, had you given up on me?”
Perhaps I had. I felt oddly dull at the realization. “You did, but I did not… I did not ask you to do this. Not now. I am not sure I am ready.”
I am not ready to part with Lewis.
“You did not have to ask me,” Pretoria replied with belligerent affection. “And we are never truly ready for the great leaps in life, we must simply close our eyes and take them. Tillie, I did not expect you to fling yourself on me in thanks, but you seem almost displeased.”
“Is Lewis not coming?”
Evidently, that was not the question she expected. She furrowed her brows at me, then her brown eyes rounded in realization. “Oh dear. No, love, he is not. He did not… You two did not discuss this? He decided to stay.”
I pinned my lips closed. A great wave of emotion, churning and complex, crashed over me, and I found myself unable to speak. The carriage rattled on and on, and Pretoria watched me with an elder sibling’s insight, concern, and benevolent condescension.
“I did not expect it to happen like this,” I said by way of explanation. I let out a heated breath. “I’m unsure what I want, just now.”
“Then it is good I have decided for you,” she stated with a shake of her head. “They have their claws in you, darling, but I shall pry them out.”
I did not know what to say to this, still numbed with too much feeling, so I moved on. I sat a little straighter, pushed the final image of Lewis from my mind, and folded my hands in my lap, mirroring my sister across the carriage.
“Very well,” I said. “Where are we going?”