The apartment suddenly felt small as a closet, the air close as a crypt. Close as the knowledge, the certainty, that he would die here, scraping together pennies, surrounded by mementos of a life unlived, by concern that could do nothing but suffocate, by care that could do nothing but confine.
His cigarette, forgotten, was dead, half ash. “As you can see, I’m quite spent. I think its best you leave.”
David pressed his lips together, wetted them, as if considering his next words, then nodded. “Yes, I think it is.”
As he left, Sy felt the impulse to call after him, but stamped it out. There was nothing more to say. The door clicked shut.
But if David had asked, just once, he would have told him. Told him what it was like, being owned. And David would tell himhewasn’t owned; only his debt. And Sy would tell him he was right; there was a difference. And then he would describe exactly what that difference was.
He would tell him how he knew, as soon as he was directed, discreetly, to the antechamber of Edgard’s bedroom, why he had been summoned that evening. How the sight of the girl sitting shadowed and silent on a settee had hit him like a blow. How Edgard had commanded Sy, as impassively as if he was remarking upon the upholstery, to be quick, as his heart was bothering him again. How he said nothing more, only motioning toward the settee before disappearing back into his bedroom.
How three of the girl’s fingers jutted at alarming angles. How her calm and stoic face was bruised and blooded, though her lip trembled when she thought Sy wasn’t looking. Fair haired with a round face and wide eyes, like all the other girls. Edgard’s tastes were very particular, and with the right glyphs, any part of the body could be rearranged. He wondered how much of her looks, of her body, was her own. If any of it was her own desire. Another possibility for her stoicism: she may have had her tears taken away. She wouldn’t be the first.
She was the first he had seen with broken bones.
“What’s your name, darling?” he asked, but she shook her head, gesturing to her mouth. With a surge of anger, he understood. Tongue-tied. If it wasn’t enough to hurt her, to change her, to take every choice away from her, the king had taken her voice too. A scribe had, at the king’s command. She may not ever get it back.
If he wouldn’t be punished, he would undo it himself in an instant. But he pushed his luck enough already. It had taken years of simpering and flattery, but Edgard liked him;let him take liberties no other scribe could, especially not an indenture. For example, he never forced Sy to dress up his dolls for him. Only to fix them after they’d been broken.
Nevertheless, if he loosed her tongue, he would be punished, and Edgard would only have her silenced again, or replaced with someone else plucked from the streets, like all the others, and this girl too, no doubt, had been. Some, one of the women he saw often had told him, saw the position as a privilege, a step up in the world, and went willingly – as willingly as one could when one’s choices were all varying degrees of staving off starvation. The worst parts, she had said, were not much worse, and the best parts far better, than what they had left behind – or what they had to look forward to.
When rumors of this predilection of Edgard’s crept their way into conversation, the response was always the same: downcast eyes, concerned tutting, but a certainty that whatever happened to those girls in that room, it was better than what would happen to them living on the street. Weren’t they clothed, weren’t they fed, weren’t they safe under a roof after all? And surely, they must have done something to end up on the street in the first place – too much drink, too much sex, too much indolence, too much, too much.
Sy did not know where those rumors stemmed from. Certainly not from him, nor from the women themselves, who were kept isolated in the palace. They must have come from the spellscribe who shaped the girls to Edgard’s liking. He prayed it was not someone he knew. The secrecy was a wound that would never heal; but the truth might kill him.
It was far from what he had imagined when he’d been handed his golden pen.
The King’s Grace. How easily it could be him in her position, or her in his. How foul that inevitably, someone must fill each role, with only a roll of the dice as to who it might be. Where would this girl be instead if she had been born the same year as him, had a father who bought her charcoals? If her father had inherited a copper mine, or her mother a country estate?
Where was the grace in any of this?
“I’ll have you better in no time at all,” he had said softly, pulling out a long scrap of vellum, rolling his left shoulder in anticipation. Injuries so extensive required a good deal of blood, and, despite Edgard’s command to be quick, and the anticipation of retribution, he intended to be very thorough.
Since she could not speak, he relied on his senses and was careful with his hands and with his glyphs. He couldn’t charge for it, but if she had a cough from a childhood illness, or bones thinned from malnutrition, she would not by the time he was done. All through it, his breath did not waver; his fingers did not twitch.
She of course noticed his ministrations were more thorough than instructed. When he finished, she looked at him for a long moment, then gestured to his paper and nearly empty pen.
He hesitated. Ordinarily, he would never allow another soul to touch his pen, let alone wield it. He did not know this girl, and had no reason to trust her. But her voice had been stolen with a pen just like this, and by the same man who had graced Sy with his.
Against his better judgement, he handed it to her, hoping she could appreciate the trust he was showing her in allowing her to hold it. He held his breath as she scrawled in clumsy block letters. One word.
Marie.
He left her to face Edgard, who was less than pleased at being kept waiting. In addition to his heart, which needed near constant maintenance, it seemed, in the interim, he had found several other minor afflictions in need of attention, many of which Sy quickly discovered were completely fabricated. Even so, he attended to them: he had no choice. Instead, he chose to conceal his awareness, knowing his indifference would drain the game of its fun, thus draining less of him. Each spell he wrote was perfect, and had no purpose, and no effect.
When it was over at last, a page escorted him to the back entrance. It was only then he felt the impact of all the blood he had spent that night. Lightheaded, winded. Dreadfully thirsty. A headache pounding like a hammer to his skull. But he’d still had to wind his way home, through the dark garden, back to theempty streets, then up the stairs to his tiny apartment, where he sat now, holding the invoice the page had left him with, reflecting how much of his debt this job, labeledMiscellaneous, had repaid.
Not even a dent.
CHAPTER FIVE
It was still early afternoon. The meeting at the palace was not for hours yet. But Sy found himself incurably restless. After suffering a vision, unbidden, of Abigail Skeylor’s poor screeching parakeet, he huffed a sigh and approached his vanity.
“Get yourself together,” he muttered into the mirror. He dabbed on a bit of scent, his favorite eau de toilette – lily-of-the-valley laced with jasmine, fern, and civet. He also traded his plain, bed-rumpled shirt for one of his favorites, rarely worn, for its bohemian aura – an aura clients didn’t care for. Sabina called it his carnival top. The upper torso was marigold yellow on one side, carnation pink on the other; the colors ran halfway down the sleeves, the rest of which were white. The bottom quarters of the front were willow green and mauve.
David would scold him for leaving, for straining himself. He promised he was only going for a bit of fresh air, a dip outside and straight back, then remembered there was no one around to reassure but himself.
The tobacconist up the street was happy to see him when he stopped in to purchase a packet of cigarettes – pre-rolled. Outside, he lit one, pausing by a bench but not sitting, watching the passersby.
