Gilded Ashes

  “Don’t worry,” I say. “I have no interest in discussing your broken heart.”

  “Did he read the letter?” Koré demands from the kitchen doorway that afternoon.

  I look up from the pot of barley soup I’m stirring. “Yes.”

  “What did he say?” Her left hand rests against the doorframe in the languid, graceful way that she always poses, but her right hand is clenched on a handkerchief.

  “That he would read it.”

  “Watch your tongue. Did he—” She breaks off in a fit of harsh coughing.

  “You haven’t caught a chill, have you?” I ask. Koré is forever catching minor illnesses when she doesn’t sleep—Stepmother calls it aristocratic frailty—and she’s even harder to please than usual when she’s sick.

  “It’s nothing,” says Koré. “Did he seem—favorable?”

  Once I swore you didn’t love him, I think, but I hold the words back. I’m sure I was right when I told him that she didn’t want his love. There has never been any room in her heart for anyone but Stepmother and Thea. But I’m not sure if she’ll be angry that I took such initiative—or if her pride will be hurt—

  And I don’t want to share with her the moment when I laughed, when I spoke the truth to somebody who wanted to hear it.

  “I think so,” I say instead, which is a truth and a lie at once.

  My reward is Koré straightening up, the majesty back in her shoulders and chin.

  “Of course he can’t fail to be impressed,” she says. “Good work, Maia. You’ll take him another letter tomorrow. Tell Mother I won’t be down for dinner. You can bring me a bowl of broth later.” A whirl of bright blue skirts, and she’s gone.

  “Poor Koré,” I say to Mother. “I suppose she won’t be getting much sleep tonight.” The words are a reflex, but I remember Lord Anax, and I almost mean them. He won’t be easily impressed.

  “Well, on the bright side,” I say, “I suppose I’m going to see a lot of the duke’s palace.”

  I may tell the truth again two or even three times before the fortnight is up. My heart flutters.

  The next day, I try to slip into the palace the same way as on the first, but a footman catches me halfway up the second staircase, in the spot where gold leaf has just begun to bloom across the walls.

  “What are you doing?” he demands. “You don’t belong to the household.”

  “No, sir, I’m here on an errand,” I say quickly. The molded rosettes on the wall press into my back. I can feel the long, cold limbs of panic slowly unfolding through my body.

  “On whose behalf?” The footman looms closer; he’s almost as young as I am but a head taller, with broad shoulders, greased-back hair, and the smug confidence of a man with both muscles and a white waistcoat.

  I smile brightly. “Lord Anax sent for me.”

  He laughs. “Do you expect me to believe—”

  “Ah, Maia, there you are. Finally.”

  Lord Anax stands on the landing above, leaning against the banister. He’s facing one of the great portraits on the wall; he looks down at us from the corner of his eye. His waistcoat is cut from golden brocade, and a golden watch chain glints from his pocket. Everything about him proclaims lordly unconcern.

  “Well, bring her up,” he says, fixing his gaze again on the portrait. “I haven’t got all day.”

  “My lord?” says the footman. “Is this suspicious character—”

  Lord Anax favors him with a glance that says the entire universe is too wearisomely stupid for words but the footman most of all.

  “This suspicious character has come to visit me on behalf of our friends in the library,” he says with haughty boredom. “Kindly do not interfere with these matters again. Maia, come with me.”

  I walk past the red-faced footman to Lord Anax’s side. He straightens up, says, “This way,” and strides swiftly down the corridor. A few minutes later, we are back in his study.

  “Well,” he says, turning to me, and his face is suddenly washed clean of the boredom it had before. “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”

  “And now you’ve assigned me a new job.” I wrinkle my forehead. “‘Our friends in the library’?”

  He laughs. “The Resurgandi, of course. Everyone’s got a silly nickname for them, and that’s my father’s.”

  “That footman can’t have believed it,” I say. “He’s gossiping with the other servants right now.”

  “Oh, but I think he will believe it. There’s talk of inducting me, since I did so well at university, and you know how they cloak all their goings-on in secretive mummery. Oaths and hand signs and the like. Keeps them occupied, I suppose.”

  Of course I know about the Resurgandi: they have their headquarters at the university here in Sardis, where they research the Hermetic techniques that create streetlamps and grow silkworms despite the climate. Stepmother sometimes mutters that they dabble in demonic arts as well, but I know that’s a lie, because I know what it looks like when people meet with demons.

  Or when they’re foolish enough to bargain with one.

  “I have another letter for you,” I say, pulling the slightly creased paper out of my pocket.

  “I read the other one last night,” he says. “Verified all the quotations, too. Give me another day and I could track down all of the ancient sources from which your mistress drew her rhetorical figures, because—well, imitating six authors in two pages may be a good exercise, but with that many pieces stitched together, it’s impossible to hide the seams, let alone express an original thought.”

  I remember Koré’s pale face when she handed me the letter this morning, her ink-stained fingers.

  “She’s a very stupid person,” I say. “But it is neither lordly nor kind to sneer at her efforts.”

  “You have an odd kind of loyalty.”

  “You have an odd kind of tact. Or is that beneath the notice of a duke’s heir?”

  It’s like standing in front of a house with open windows and watching all the shutters fly shut at once. He only moves a fraction—a slight lift of the chin and tightening of the shoulders, a minuscule lowering of the eyelids—but the bored young aristocrat is suddenly back.

  “You’d be surprised what I’m expected not to notice.” He plucks the letter from my hand. “So. Tell me why.”

  “Why you’re expected not to notice things?”

  “No.” He looks away, plucks Alcibiades off the table. “Why I should respect your lady, when you call her stupid?”

  Again I feel the strange, heady rush of chains uncurling from around my tongue.

  “Well,” I say, “she’s stupid because she wants her mother to love her, and she thinks her mother will if she obeys her perfectly. But she’s clever enough, at least, to realize she can’t love or be kind to everyone. And she’s honest enough that she doesn’t pretend. She’s cruel to me, not out of spite, but because she thinks it will please her mother, and she makes no bones about it.”

  Lord Anax looks at me. “You think I should respect her because she’s cruel to you.”

  “Because she’s practical, despite her foolishness.” He’s still staring at me, and I add hastily, “You don’t need to worry she’ll ever be unkind to you, because she knows how you can help her mother and sister.”

  He shakes his head and laughs. “I can’t tell if you’re the maddest girl in the world, or the most noble.”

  “I’m not mad,” I say. “I’m the only one who’s not, because I don’t want to be loved.”

  Lord Anax looks away at Alcibiades, as if the skull’s empty eye sockets contain all the secrets of the world. “What’s so terrible about being loved?”

  I think of how Thea is always glancing at Stepmother, her body gently leaning toward her like a sunflower seeking the sun. Of how Koré stands in marble perfection and never looks at Stepmother once, because that is the way that she believes a perfect daughter would behave.

  I remember laughing beneath the apple tree, delighted by
my mother’s love, and I remember the day I learned the price of that love.

  “Love is madness,” I say. “Doesn’t everyone agree that you’d do anything, endure anything, to be with the ones you love? So either you’re willing to let them use you with any sort of cruelty, so long as they keep you—which makes you a fool—or you’re willing to commit any cruelty, so long as you get to keep them—which makes you a monster. Either way, it’s madness.”

  “Alcibiades, I think we’ve found the maddest girl and the only sane girl in one,” he says, and then looks back at me. “You’re not making a very good argument for marriage, you know.”

  “I told you,” I say. “My lady won’t ever love you.”

  “You’re very devoted to her cause,” he says. “Are you sure you aren’t doing this for love of her?”

  “No,” I say quietly. “I just need her out of the way.”

  The next day, I’m so tired that I have to walk to the palace double-quick, or I’ll sit down and fall asleep on the street. Thea said she wouldn’t have anyone but me modify her green silk dress for the ball—I think she meant to make Stepmother feel I was valuable, but Stepmother’s hatred for me is matched only by her belief in my speed. I had to sew all night to meet her demands. Now my eyes itch and ache with weariness, and all I can think is that maybe Lord Anax will let me sit down in his chair a moment, or even just curl up in a corner.

  I’m so busy dreaming about that corner that I walk straight into a footman. It’s the same one who tried to throw me out yesterday.

  “Lord Anax is in the second-best drawing room,” he says after a short, stiff pause.

  “Take me to him,” I say, trying to sound authoritative. The drawing room may have a sofa.

  The drawing room has gilt mirrors on the walls, a statue of Persephone in the center, and two sofas with plump purple cushions.

  It also has a piano. When the footman eases the door open, Lord Anax is sitting at the piano with his back to us, pounding out a rollicking dance tune as if his life depends on it. The footman opens his mouth to announce me, but I shake my head and slip inside silently.

  The sofa is soft as newly risen bread dough. I sink into it. Lord Anax is slamming out the notes of the song as loud and as fast as he can, but I’m asleep in moments.

  When I wake up, he’s playing a different song—slower, more intricate, with a multitude of trills. He stumbles over every one, and though he manages to keep his playing gentle enough to suit the piece, the whole thing feels shapeless.

  He hits the final chord a little too fast and loud. Then he looks over his shoulder at me. “Should I be flattered or insulted that I sent you straight into the arms of Morpheus?”

  I stand and walk to his side, digging into my pocket. “I have a letter for you.”

  “Of course. Did you think it was any good?”

  “What?”

  “My playing.” He’s staring at the piano keys, and his voice is light, but I can hear the tension underneath. “Did you think it was any good?”

  I consider the question. He’s never punished me for telling the truth yet.

  “It wasn’t terrible,” I say. “But it wasn’t good. It wasn’t anything, really.”

  He laughs softly. “Did you like it?”

  I shrug.

  “Don’t be tactful now. You were thinking something.”

  “I was thinking,” I say, “what does it matter if I liked it or not? You won’t stop or start playing for love of me. You don’t care what I think, and I don’t care what you play.”

  “I would have been a piano player,” he says abruptly. “If I weren’t the duke’s son. I know it’s not genteel, but if I weren’t my father’s son, I wouldn’t be a gentleman.”

  “You’d get tired of it,” I say.

  “No.” He stares at the keys. “I’d never get tired of music. But I’d never be much good at it either.” Gently, as if he’s closing the doors of a shrine, he lowers the lid back over the keys. “Just as well I’m the duke’s son and everyone has to flatter me.”

  I remember this morning, how I yawned and immediately whispered, I’m so happy to be awake, Mother, as I stirred the porridge. I remember Koré looking at the dress I sewed for Thea and saying, I’m glad you’ve found something that stupid girl is good for, Mother.

  “You’re not alone,” I say. “Everyone has to flatter somebody to survive. Besides, I didn’t mean you’d get tired of music. Being a commoner isn’t easy, you know. You’d get tired of the work.”

  “Do you?”

  “Every day. But unlike you, I don’t have a choice. Here’s your letter. I suppose I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He catches my wrist. “Maia,” he says, “thank you. Thank you for telling me the truth about my music.”

  “Just for that?” I ask.

  “You’re the first one, can you believe it?”

  I feel the opulent room weighing down on me, as heavy as the smiles I craft for Mother.

  “Yes,” I say. “I can believe it.”

  His music really is terrible.

  But it echoes in my head, all the rest of the day.

  If you weren’t a servant,” asks Lord Anax, “what would you do?”

  It’s the sixth day of my strange mission; Lord Anax is wrinkling today’s letter between his hands.

  “My lady wrote that,” I say wearily.

  “I know,” he says. “I asked you a question.”

  “Oh.” I pause and think it over. “What does it matter?”

  “Well, I told you what I’d do, if I weren’t my father’s son. What would you do, if you weren’t a servant?”

  He should ask: if I weren’t my mother’s daughter, or if my mother had not loved me quite so much. But no matter how I enjoy telling him the truth, that is not something I dare say to him.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “It will never happen.”

  Ghosts are laid to rest when injustices are righted, when their duties are fulfilled. But my mother’s duty is to make me happy as long as I live. So there is no rest for her, and no escape for me. I will be happy and happy until it kills me.

  “Pretend it does matter,” says Lord Anax. “Pretend that tomorrow you were set free and could do anything you liked. What would it be?”

  I open my mouth to tell him he’s a fool, but then I remember he does not know I am a slave to my mother’s love. He imagines I have only living masters to fear. And it’s true, if I succeed in getting him to marry Koré, if all my stepfamily leaves the house, there will be nobody alive to rule me. I realize that while I have dared to dream of such freedom, I have not yet dared to imagine what could come after.

  “I think,” I say slowly, “I would like a kitchen where I was mistress and I could decide what I cooked. And I would like . . .” As I speak the words, the desire unfurls like a crocus blossom. “I would like to have a great fluffy orange cat that would sit by the fireplace and purr.”

  I’ve surprised him; I can see that in the tilt of his eyebrows. “Is that all?”

  “It’s more than I have.”

  “You’re not a timid girl,” he says. “You don’t lack imagination either. You walked into this palace and commanded me to marry your mistress. Why do you dare to dream so little for yourself?”

  “Do you imagine everyone is so fortunate as you are?” I demand. “I’m already dreaming more than I ought, and far more than I’ll likely ever have a chance to get. And you, in what way are you better?”

  I see his face stiffen; then he swallows and looks at his desk, shoulders slouched and hands in his pockets, a careless posture that I know is a lie.

  “You are heir to the Duke of Sardis—in ten or twenty years, you’ll be the most powerful man in Arcadia—but you can’t imagine anything better for yourself than choosing at random a wife you despise and pitying yourself to the end of your days because you broke your own heart.”

  He lets out a breath, nostrils flaring. I should stop. But I’m drunk on truth, and though my body
is shaking in anticipation of his anger, my mouth won’t stop.

  “Why don’t you tell your father that you don’t want to marry?” I say. “He may want you to secure an heir, but he can’t force you—a firstborn son has rights—and if he does find a way to disown you, you’re not helpless. You’re a man, you’re wellborn, you’ve been to the university, and you have contacts in the Resurgandi; you can find a way to support yourself.” I think of the way Thea goes over the accounting books, late at night when Stepmother isn’t there to tell her it isn’t ladylike. “Why are you carrying on with this madcap plan? Why are you trying to marry anyone?”

  He turns on me, and all pretense of lordly boredom is shattered by the raw, helpless fury in his face. “Because she asked me to.”

  Even though I’d been expecting it, his anger rocks me back a step. “Who?”

  “Lydia wrote me. Said she knew I despised her, but if I had any pity, I’d bestow my name on someone else so that her father would let her accept suitors and not doom her to spinsterhood.” His voice drops as he looks away, running a hand through his hair. “I’d taken everything else away from her. What else could I do?”

  I stare at him. “But you said—that first day, you said you didn’t care—”

  “Yes, yes, I said! I am the duke’s son and I often lie, my lady. Despite my exalted position, there are freedoms you have and I do not, and the truth, I regret to inform you, is one of them.”

  My body stiffens, a thousand memories icing over my skin: smiling when Stepmother tells me I’m a stupid little girl, and afterward whispering, Mother, it’s so funny how she pretends not to love me. Koré saying I’m useless and slow and she can’t imagine why they feed me. Mother, I feel so sorry for Koré when she’s cross. Thea trying to make peace and only bringing down more punishment on my head because she’s too stupid and spoiled to think through the consequences of her words. Mother, Thea is so good to me.