Chapter 18 #2
“Mr. Moran and I keep our work separate, as much as we may,” she replied, focused on her portrait. “It is more congenial to the marital state.”
“A marital state which the Guild hopes to produce more Starlight Entwined.”
“Yes. Mother’s bloodline produced Pretoria. With Moran, I stand a good chance of doing so as well.”
I swallowed a knot of revulsion, not only at the thought of my sister and Moran’s endeavors in conception, but at her impassivity to it all.
“What is his work?” I asked, redirecting.
“Influence,” she replied. “For instance, today he and several others are meeting the Grand General to discuss his intention of ousting the Guild from Harrow, followed by the systematic expulsion and eradication of our kind from the entirety of Arrent.”
She spoke this mildly, but each word was pointed.
“He cannot oust the Guild completely,” I replied. “Madge, if you know something about Mr. Stoke’s death, if a Guild mage was involved—”
“Why would they be?” she asked coolly. “And Baffin can evict us, if Incarnadine and the Zealots have turned the entirety of the city against us. I outlined this for you last night. If he is successful, Baffin will be the hero once more, saving a desperate Harrow from the poison of the Entwined. Bring me coffee?”
I looked from her to the tray, to the ornate pot. Deciding against petty refusal, I poured her a cup and brought it to the small table beside her easel.
“Mr. Moran will return from his meeting in the next few hours,” she said, sipping the coffee and giving me a passing, soulless smile of thanks. “I will inquire about your murderous mark and possible culprits, as a sign of my affection for you.”
Affection. The word felt like a wound.
“But why would someone want to murder your employer?” she went on. “Who did he cross?”
It seemed Supford had kept his cards close to his chest, and not informed the Guild of the artifact and Lord Stillwell.
That was all very good. I hardly needed the Guild catching wind of the artifact and further muddying the waters.
The thought was a brief one, but it resonated through me, digging in and making space for itself between grief for Mr. Stoke and fear for myself.
I quietened. The Guild certainly would have a vested interest in the artifact and in stopping Baffin’s research, and perhaps, in that, I had found a way to assuage the whisper of guilt inside me. A way to shirk that pesky weight of responsibility.
Of course, a selfish part of me affirmed, this is not about heroics and the greater good for you, is it? It’s about money. That ship. The horizon.
Mr. Stoke was dead, as painful as that was. But if I found the artifact, I could still deliver it to Stillwell. I could still get paid and be rid of Wake. If I kept Mr. Stoke’s portion of the fee for myself, Lewis and I might still be able to afford our new identities and lives—if only just.
Then I could alert the Guild to the dangers of the artifact. They would claim it from Stillwell and stop Baffin, all while I sailed away and… forgot. Forgot Mr. Stoke and the murderous mark. Forgot Harrow.
It was a good plan, if I did not look at it too closely, and ignored the complex tangle of my emotions. And an intrusive memory of kissing Harden in a darkened doorway.
I realized the room was very quiet and Madge was studying me.
“You have gotten yourself into trouble,” she observed, brush poised.
“You found me in prison,” I replied, reflecting her own icy exterior back to her.
“Why, were you the cause of his death?” She asked the question so calmly, so easily—as if this were plausible and perhaps even a little expected.
“No.” I recoiled.
“Hm,” she murmured. She slowly took another sip of her coffee, cleaned her brush in a teacup of water, and tapped it out on the leg of her easel before mixing a new shade.
She glanced at her reflection in the mirror and went back to work.
“Well, whatever you are hiding, I’m sure it will come to light.
If it is relevant. You, however, may ask me whatever you wish. I will hide nothing from you.”
I suppressed a snort and sat down in a chair of my own. I forced myself to sit back, presenting a posture of ease and relaxation that I did not feel. I had more questions of course, about Silvers and possible avenues of escape, but suspected that even skirting such topics would not get me far.
So I turned my focus to Madge. To the woman. To my sister.
“How are your children?”
“Well.”
“How many are there now?”
“Five,” she replied. “Willhelm, the eldest, has proved himself to have an exceptional mind. Minerva, my second, is diligent in her studies but distractable. She is too active. Her threads twine towards painting, as mine, but she lacks the patience. I have suggested she be applied to sculpting, so she might work with her hands until maturity calms her.”
I forgot to drink my coffee, watching Madge over the rim. She spoke of her children with pride, but there was a distance to it. She had always been cold, but now she struck me almost as a caricature of herself. Of who she had once been.
I flicked a glance at the painting.
“Ophelia and Imogen, my third and fourth, have presented Glim threads, naturally, but are too young to do much of note. Their nannies say, however, that they are both observant creatures, which is promising.”
“You have not seen this yourself?”
“I have been elsewhere.”
“Ah. Where is the fifth?”
“With Ophelia and Imogen. The infant was born this summer and has yet to show threads, but between my blood and Everard’s, I’ve little doubt she will be noteworthy. A Starlight.”
I blinked from my sister’s face to her stomach, and back to her face. “You’ve left her already?”
“The situation in Harrow is too serious for maternal indulgences,” Madge replied. “Her wetnurse is exemplary, what other use is there in my presence?”
I found I had nothing to say to that, because the answer was too vast, too intimate.
My chest ached and my head filled with the recollection of how my mother had wept at Madge’s departure, all those years ago.
How stricken she had been at Pretoria’s.
And how, by mine, she had simply watched from the window, dull-eyed and distant.
Madge continued to paint.
“What is her name?”
“Who?”
“Your baby.”
“Oh. Venecia.”
I thought of the tiny child, this niece who would live out her days with only marginal connection to the woman who bore her, and felt my heart rupture anew.
I could almost feel her in my arms, small and helpless, and resolved once more that I would not give the Guild the chance to do to me what they had to my mother—and to Madge.
“When was the last time you saw our mother?” I asked, attempting to hold my own emotions in check.
Madge’s brows contracted, ever so slightly, in thought. Or consternation. “I do not recall.”
“You painted it away,” I accused.
She shrugged. “Perhaps.”
We fell silent, after that. I set my coffee aside, and simply watched my sister finish her painting. She sat back as her threads quietened, smiling with professional satisfaction at the portrait before her.
It was exquisite, incomparably lifelike but still signature, edged with Madge’s soft, haloed style. She had captured herself perfectly, every illuminated strand of hair and the fall of every shadow. The only thing that differed from life were her eyes.
The eyes of the portrait were emotive, full of lament, and a lingering ghost of fear.
Nightmares, Madge had said. What did she fear, in the dark of the night? Whatever it was, it was trapped within oil, pigment, and canvas now, and there it would remain until circumstance—time, intention, or accident—destroyed the painting.
“Now,” Madge said, turning to me. “Is there anything you would like me to paint away?”
“No,” I snapped.
She looked startled by my response. “You sound as if I offered to torture you.”
“You do not paint Pretoria and I,” I stated. “You promised Mother that. You promised us.”
From Madge’s expression, she had disremembered that. “Ah. Yes. Well.” She glanced down at herself as if she had also forgotten her state of dress. “Time to prepare for the day. Shall I do your hair?”
I consented to dress in borrowed clothing and arrange my own hair, if only to distract from Madge’s terrible suggestion and arm myself with several more layers of fabric.
I now regretted my refusal to dress earlier.
I felt exposed in a way I should not have before my own flesh and blood as I donned Madge’s plainest ensemble, a pale blue skirt with a shirtwaist of exceptional quality and a matching jacket.
It was a strange prison, this lovely room with the quiet company of my soulless sister, but it was a prison indeed.
I had just finished pinning my hair around a form when Mr. Moran entered. As he had with my chamber, he did not knock, but simply appeared.
This time, however, he did not close the door at his back.
“Everard,” Madge greeted him.
“Margaret. We must speak privately.” He gave me a pointed look and nodded to the hallway. “You will be escorted back to your room, Miss Rushforth.”
Madge paused, but whatever she wanted to say, she chose not to do so in front of me.
My gaze drifted back to Madge’s portrait, then to my sister herself. I nodded slowly, murmured a lackluster farewell, and left the room.
As I was escorted back to my chamber, I turned over Madge’s offer.
My sister had painted away so much of herself.
I almost envied that, just then. I wished I could forget Mr. Stoke and his horrific, butchered face.
I wished I could give away the unrequited affection I harbored for Lewis, and perhaps even my attraction to Harden.
I wished I could evict the thread of responsibility that tied me to the artifact and Baffin’s research.
Still, I would not submit to Madge’s brush, not willingly. Yet I understood that willingness might no longer matter. A childhood promise not to paint me, not to manipulate me in that way, might no longer hold now that I was back in the Guild’s grasp and Madge had so… changed.
I would not be the first malcontented mage to find their rebelliousness culled by a Glim’s brush. The method was imperfect, but it struck me now that Madge’s portrait itself was a statement: a lovely, beautiful warning.
At what point would her offer turn to a threat?
I saw Mr. Stoke’s face in a flash of grief and guilt, and closed my eyes for half a breath.
I had to stay focused. Find the artifact. Claim the reward. Meet Lewis.
Escape.