Chapter Thirteen
Fortblanche had wakened fully by the time I reached the bottom of the spire, yet I did not, despite Eliot’s advice to the contrary, go immediately to breakfast. Instead, I made my way back to my room, removing a fountain pen, an inkwell, and a sheet of letter paper from the drawers of the small desk pushed against my wall, and scratched out a note.
My message was simple—barely a letter at all, really. Still, if the suspicion that had been building in me for the past several hours proved right, it was all my recipient would need.
Once the ink had dried, I took the paper and crossed to the mirror in the corner of my room. No streak of light flared across its surface to greet me this time; from the depths of the looking glass, my reflection stared out at me innocently, as if curious to learn why I’d come.
Peering past her, I reached out and knocked thrice on the glass, pressing my note firmly against the mirror with my other hand. I held it there in silence for several seconds, ticking each one off in my mind, then stepped back and let the paper flutter helplessly to the ground.
I did not wait for a response before seeing myself out again.
The breakfast room was a welcoming space, dominated by a single oval table, laid with an embroidered runner and set for ten. Only a few of the seats were occupied; I regarded the empty ones suspiciously, feeling as though in choosing one, I was somehow selecting a side.
“Oh—excuse me.”
I froze, my hand still gripping the top of the chair I was holding, my gaze on the waterfall of books that had been resting on its seat—now piled in a sad heap on the floor.
From the next chair over, Manon Blanc glanced up from the single bookmarked text in her lap, her mouth still parted with her apology.
She was wearing a simple linen frock, only the clean elegance of its lines betraying its fine, undoubtedly expensive craftsmanship.
A pair of wire-rimmed spectacles were perched loosely on the bridge of her nose—a departure from the bare-faced look she’d adopted at the ball last night—and they tempered the rest of her features, blunting the sharp graze of her cheekbones and the jut of her chin.
A few curls had slipped from her caul, brushing against her jaw; as I watched, she reached up, tucking the stray locks behind her ear nervously.
My heart stumbled at the motion. A society silkwitch would never allow herself to be sighted without her caul.
After Eliot’s brusqueness earlier, I viciously did not want to admit that he had been right in his assessment.
If I’d let my hair down in the turret—if I hadn’t bothered to pin it back up before breakfast—how odd would I have appeared to my fellow competitors?
How was it that he seemed to understand my kind better than I did?
Kneeling down, I picked up a book from the fallen pile and passed it back to Manon. “Are these just for the morning, then, or do you expect they’ll last you the day?”
Manon laughed, her cheeks reddening as she accepted the book.
“It is excessive, I know,” she said, shaking her head.
She had a girlish voice, sweeter and more disarming than Sybil’s, like a hazy childhood summer.
“Anais chastises me constantly for it, but I’m afraid it is a habit I’m unable to break.
Unfortunately, you are not the first person to fall victim to my obsession. ”
Biting her lip, she glanced quickly toward the other maidens present—a couple of whom had looked up at the tumult but were now staring sleepily back into their tea—and, as if deciding something, ducked her head. I blinked at her nearness, both of us obscured beneath the rim of the table.
“To speak candidly, I’ve been hoping for the chance to catch you alone, Miss Lovett,” she said, her tone earnest. “I wanted to tell you, I am glad you stood up to us last night.”
I shifted my weight back toward my heels, the second book I’d been preparing to hand over resting, all but forgotten,against my lap. “You are?”
Manon nodded emphatically, her spectacles slipping down her nose. “Anais does not appreciate independent thinkers,” she said. “I feel otherwise.”
I raised a brow. “Is she not your best friend?”
Her skin grew splotched with pink as if tickled by steam, and immediately, I regretted my words. There was an abashed tightness to the other girl’s expression that made me feel as though I’d swatted a kitten simply because it dared approachme.
Hastily, I raised the tome I was holding, examining the cover. “I like this one. Though I enjoyed Faustine more.”
To my relief, the other maiden perked up, cradling the novel I’d previously passed her against her chest. “You’re a reader, then?”
“When I’m able,” I replied. In truth, I’d only been passably literate when I arrived at the Isle d’Eylau, my education all but abandoned once I’d come into my blessing back in Verne.
But Markham kept a small collection of books in his apartment, and as my competency had grown, so too had my love of the act.
I found it gave me pleasure to escape into my own mind, to refine for myself a skill that had nothing to do with my hair or my Wit.
My intelligence felt like my own in a way that few other pieces of my life did—a gift that would not leave me, as even my magic eventually would.
“I always hoped to read the final installment in the series,” I continued, nodding to the book I was holding. “Though I never managed to procure a copy.”
The other maiden broke into a grin. “Oh, you must borrow mine. It is a finale not to be missed—good morning, dear. Did you sleep well?”
A chill bathed my skin as a shadow fell over us, a presence approaching from behind.
I was unsurprised when I looked over my shoulder and found Anais Tremblay staring back at me, her porcelain skin dewy and her eyes bright with the stony glint of jade.
Unlike Manon, Anais appeared unchanged in the daylight; she was as beautiful as she’d been when viewed through the night rain, and possibly even more intimidating.
She smiled, the flash of her white teeth wolfish. “Miss Lovett.”
I returned her smile, predator to predator. “Miss Tremblay.”
We did not converse after that. Breakfast progressed in relative silence, most of the maidens clumped in groups of two or three, whispering to one another over their meals.
I used the relative quiet to study the silkwitches I had not yet acquainted myself with.
The high-cheekboned, dark-eyed girl sitting near the head of the table I quickly identified as Nathalie Moreau; the full-figured copper-haired maiden next to her, Mireille Laurent.
Elspeth Winn sat to their side, her head bent toward Delphine Barbier, their words too low to make out. Another alliance, perhaps?
Deliberately, I carved a neat spoonful of porridge from my bowl and brought it daintily to my mouth in the way Eliot had taught me.
Of the three girls, Nathalie was the only one with connections to her Weaver line, a distant relation of the Moreau sorcerer family.
Her Wit, I thought I recalled, had something to do with animals; I focused on her briefly, then glanced away when she caught me looking.
There was no official end to our meal; it seeped to a stop gradually, one girl after another pushing aside her tea, drawing her conversation to a close, and slipping out.
Manon and Anais were among the last to leave, Clio Lavoie, who’d taken a seat alongside them, rising as they did like an anxious child afraid of being left behind.
Sybil had departed prior to them—in fact, she’d barely arrived, sweeping in for only a few minutes to fill her teacup and then exiting just as quickly, steaming drink in her gloved hand.
Eventually, one other maiden—a fine-featured, petite girl seated directly across from me, with a nest of white-blond hair like a knot of corn silk—and I remained.
Like me, the other silkwitch had not spoken to those around her while she’d been eating, instead picking at her plate silently with her head downturned.
Aside from the repetitive, mechanical stab of her fork, she was completely still, so much so that I almost wondered whether she’d fallen into a daze, but when Clio stood to leave, she looked up.
Her eyes were large, her irises a distinctive, luminous blue-gray, so pale they appeared lunar. Her gaze tracked levelly to mine as Clio exited the room, expectant and knowing as if awaiting my signal, and though she had not given her name when she sat down, I knew her.
I was staring into the wise, all-seeing eyes of the Owl.
I remained silent until I was sure Clio had gone, setting aside my empty teacup only when I heard the click of the door behind her. “Thank you for waiting, Miss Rochefort.”
The Owl—Marie-Louise Rochefort—did not blink.
There was a glistening, almost wet shine to her gaze, the rest of her so pale and small—fragile, really—as if all her strength had been funneled into her sight.
“You requested me to,” she replied simply.
Her voice was reedy and faint, like wind through rushes.
I thought back to the note I’d penned earlier, pressed against my mirror before I departed my room: Meet me after breakfast. I hadn’t been certain the other maiden would see it—hadn’t been sure, even, that the glares of light on my looking glass were an indicator of her presence—but I’d been curious enough to try.
It appeared that risk had paid off.
“That I did.” Pushing my chair back, I beckoned for Marie-Louise to rise.
She did so without protest, floating over to my side, her neck and shoulders steady even as her feet moved beneath her like the motionless drift of a ghost. I suppressed a shiver as she approached; her silent obedience was more unsettling, in some ways, than her dissent would have been, her colorless, supernal eyes trained unwaveringly on me all the while.