Chapter 45
Chapter
I found Lucy out front, on a decorative bench by a bed of white roses. She didn’t look up when I sat beside her.
I folded my hands in my lap and inhaled. The air smelled of fresh-turned dirt, sweet and loamy.
“When Henry stopped writing, all those years ago,” I said softly, and swallowed, “I was terrified. Not because of Henry—I was furious with him—but I was afraid because of you.”
Lucy did look at me then, her lips pressed tight.
“I was terrified I would lose you, too. You were so strong, and brave, and kind. I’d never met anyone like you before.
I didn’t even know there were other girls like you—like me—and it was, well, Luce, it isn’t an exaggeration to say that meeting you was like finding the other half of my soul.
I’ve made a lot of discoveries on that beach.
But you were—you are—the best thing I’ve ever found. ”
I was blinking quickly now, trying my damnedest not to cry.
Lucy didn’t say anything, but she grabbed my hand, lacing our fingers tightly together.
“You have been my sister—my heart, Luce—for so long, that sometimes it’s easy to forget those hearts beat to different songs.”
Lucy never bothered to hide her tears. They tracked down her cheeks, dripping from her jaw. She let them fall to her lap.
“It’s horrific, Mary. What they’re doing to those people is wrong. Why can’t you see that? Are you just blinded because it’s Henry?”
I started to speak, then stopped. I owed her a real, thoughtful answer.
Was she right? Was I blinded by love?
I did love him, but I wasn’t starry-eyed about it. I didn’t know what the future held—I could just as easily imagine us married in a year as estranged once again.
So it wasn’t love that tinged my thoughts of the mill, but I did wonder if it might be, well, need.
I’d broken with Buckland. My only chance of nomination now was Henry. And if I turned on him? If I told him Lucy was right, and the Loom was an abomination? What then? I might lose that chance, too.
The idea of the Loom wasn’t pleasant. I certainly saw her point there. Passing blood through a chain of bodies to mingle it was the kind of idea that had to make your skin crawl a bit.
But I’d seen the manifold reliqs at work.
The power they could harness. The world was about to change forever, and the Society would be at the center of it, reaping the riches and the acclaim.
And I would be with them. With the manifold reliqs, we would carve great beasts from the cliffs, and pull minerals from the deep, and map the whole of the Earth, and all the other things geomagicians dreamed of doing.
I could taste it—we stood now on the edge of the unknown, with this new lamp in our hands, and I was desperate to see what we would find.
What we would learn. So as distasteful as the methodology might be, that did not, for me, outweigh the quiver of excitement in my chest.
“It’s progress, Luce,” I said at last. “Sometimes progress is messy. Sometimes it’s awful. But would their lives be any better if they were doing something else instead? Laboring in a field, or in a bed, or behind a real loom in a textile manufactory, working their fingers to the bone?”
“Yes,” she said ferociously.
I dropped my voice. “Why? So they can end up selling their magic in the slicks anyway? Aren’t those the same type of people the Prometheans want to help by raising the reliq-rates?
And all for what, one one-hundredth of what they’ll earn today?
It’s a good deal for them, Luce. Better than they’d get in the slicks. ”
“Well, maybe that’s the problem!” She winced as if she’d let something slip, but it took me a moment to understand.
“You’re afraid that when the Looms start to spread, the reform efforts will die,” I said slowly.
Lucy exhaled, looking out into the distance. “I’ve wondered from the beginning if it was wise to pin our hopes on a national rate increase. As I told Edgar, that’s just giving tacit approval to the whole system.
“Libertas Magicae,” she said fiercely. “Freedom of Magic. That’s the ultimate goal. Or I thought it was.” She shook her head sadly. “But Edgar and Henry and that horrible machine will set us back fifty years, at least, if these things spread, with the wages Henry’s offering.”
I tried to think carefully about what I wanted to say next. I’d wondered it before, but had never been brave enough to ask.
“Lucy?”
She met my eyes this time.
“Why do you care?” I wet my lips and hurried on. “I mean, no one likes to sell their magic. It feels awful. It’s shameful. But for most of us, selling magic is just one more unpleasant reality in a life full of them.”
Lucy blinked at me, stunned.
“You’ve never had to sell magic, Luce. You’ve never even used a reliq. So why does it matter to you what other people do?”
I watched her brow knit tighter and tighter as I spoke, and then suddenly smooth. “You really don’t know.”
“Know what?”
She exhaled. “It was you, Mary. At least for Edgar and me—and for Henry, too, I’d wager—you were the first person we knew—and loved—who sold their magic in the slicks.”
Red shame washed over me. So this was what Elizabeth meant.
“We were young, not blind,” Lucy said. “We watched you sneak to the slicks after dark. We saw the hollows in your cheeks. The shadows under your eyes. We saw what it cost, to sell your magic.”
She’s fighting most of all for you! Always for you! Elizabeth had said. My mouth was dry. I could hardly bear the sympathy in her eyes. “You’re saying I was, what, your—your charity inspiration? Have you pitied me all this time, then? Poor little Mary. Pathetic little Mary—”
“It wasn’t like that,” Lucy insisted. “You’re right that I’ve never used a reliq.
I’ve never been anything but a witch.” Her lip trembled.
“My father taught me to fear my own magic. To despise it. It wasn’t until I met you that I understood what a gift my power was.
My own magic, always at my fingertips. Wholly and utterly mine.
” She clasped a fist over her breast, and then let it fall. Her voice softened.
“If you were free,” she said, “and you saw others in chains, wouldn’t you want them to be free, too?
To own your magic—to truly claim it, and know that it is yours, and no one else’s—well, that’s something I wish everyone could experience.
And without trading reliqs for coin, we’d come closer.
Your own magic, for your own life. One person, one reliq.
It would be better. Don’t you think that’s worth fighting for? ”
I didn’t answer. I wished she hadn’t asked. She never had before. And my stomach sank, because it was a line drawn in the sand, and we both knew it. We could never go back.
“It’s not my fight.” My voice was barely audible.
Lucy closed her eyes. Her lip twitched, and her nostrils flared. “Then,” she said, slipping her hand from mine as she stood, “I suppose you’ve made your choice.”
“Don’t do this, Luce. We don’t have to agree on this to be friends, do we? And what about Edgar? He supports the Loom, too.” My voice cracked. “Please don’t do this.”
Lucy wiped her eye with a sleeve. “I’ll try to convince him.”
“And when that fails?”
“I don’t know.” She jerked her chin toward the mill. “But to stare evil in the face and swear it’s not what it seems? I’d do almost anything for you, Mary, and for Edgar. But I won’t do that.”
I shut my eyes, willing this to be a nightmare. But not even in my worst dreams had I imagined that my closest friend, the sister of my heart, would end our friendship over a machine.
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll make my own way back to London. Oh, and Mary?” The gravel crunched underfoot as she turned back one last time. “Good luck with the election. I’ll be rooting for you. Always.”
Part of me wanted to call out. To run after her and beg her forgiveness. I wanted to swear I would condemn the mill, and promise to help her tear down all the slicks in England. But none of it would be true. And Lucy would know, because she knew me too well.
Instead I watched my dearest friend walk down the road into town, and tears rolled slowly down my cheeks.