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  He took a deep breath. “I don’t want to be that way. If you can just be a little patient with me. You won’t be sorry, Nimira . . . my darling Nimira. I swear I’ll make you happy.”

  I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t his darling. I wanted to take Annalie’s diamonds from my neck. But if he sent me away, I’d never have a chance to save Erris.

  “Then, before we go . . . please make sure the automaton is safe.”

  “Is Smollings right? Have you talked to it? Is it alive?”

  His suspicion was hard to deny in the intimate confines of the carriage. Maybe the time had come to hint at the truth. “How would I talk to it? It’s a machine. It can’t talk. But sometimes . . . I think I feel it. I feel it living, and looking at me. When Smollings first suggested it was alive . . . I believed him, although I didn’t want to. If he is alive . . . then what a horrible fate, Hollin.”

  “A horrible fate,” he echoed. “Oh, Nimira, you are soft-hearted. I can’t do anything to help a fairy prince. If Smollings wants him, he will have him. We can only free ourselves. Please say you’ll go. I promise you won’t think of it with the fine sea air in your nose and the fine meals on your tongue.”

  If I agreed, I would have one chance to save Erris. It was more chances than I’d have any other way, it seemed.

  It would have to be enough.

  19

  The next morning, I slept in, sending Linza away when she tried to bring me breakfast. I had no desire to wake. My plan for rescuing Erris would require more luck than I was sure anyone possessed, yet failure was unbearable to ponder.

  I finally threw back the covers and dressed alone, twisting my back to reach the buttons. As soon as I laid eyes on Erris that morning I almost started to cry.

  Face it, Nimira, this might be the last time. You’re no sorceress.

  I wound him, wondering if he would now work. The hands immediately began to move.

  NIM. I’M SORRY.

  “No, Erris. I’m the one who’s sorry.”

  KARSTOR SPOKE TO ME.

  “After I left the room? But he doesn’t have a key.”

  MAGIC. LIKE YOU TALK TO A GHOST. HE ASKED ME TO PRETEND TO BREAK SO HE COULD GET ME HOME, BUT HIS PLAN FAILED.

  “Yes. Yes, I know . . . Well, it’s all right.” I didn’t want to tell him Karstor’s plan had only hastened Smollings’s desire to destroy Erris. “There must be some other way . . .” I stopped talking. My cheer sounded false. We both knew the state of things.

  I KNOW MY FATE. I ONLY WISH I COULD HAVE ONE DAY WITH YOU. PIANO KEYS DRIVE ME MAD.

  “I wish . . . I wish we could have had that, too.” I thought I’d add something like But I’ll always remember you fondly or I’m glad I was able to know you. That sounded so trite.

  “Erris, I don’t want to tell you this, but . . . I must. Hollin has asked me to go away with him.” I spoke fast, ignoring Erris’s fingers. “I didn’t have much choice. If I said no, I’m sure he’d send me away, and Smollings might destroy you. So I said yes. It will buy us a little time and until we leave I will try everything to help you, but if I fail . . . well, I’m not sure what I can do . . . anymore.”

  Erris made a low sound in his throat. YOU DON’T LOVE HIM.

  “Erris—” I struggled to speak.

  I turned away from him. “I think I could. Sometimes I do think I love him, and then . . .” I faltered. No, I wanted to say. I don’t love him. If there is any direction my heart leans, it is toward you . . .

  ALMOST WISH I’D NEVER KNOWN. SCARED FOR YOU.

  I heard footsteps coming—brisk, strong footsteps that certainly didn’t belong to a maid. Erris kept his hands in place like he was still broken, and I quickly moved behind him and lifted his jacket, pretending to look at his mechanism.

  Hollin opened the door. “There you are. Last I heard you were still sleeping.”

  “I woke a little while ago.” I tapped Erris’s piano bench with my toe. “I just wanted to see if he was still broken.” My voice had a catch to it, but if Hollin noticed, he didn’t show it.

  He waved me toward him, but I stayed put. “I have several extra trunks, so if there are any books or things around the house you’d like to take, go and collect them.”

  Heaven help me, I wasn’t ready for this yet! “Sir—are we in such a rush?”

  “I don’t want Smollings to catch wind of this. No, I want everything packed today and we’ll leave first thing tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? But that’s too soon!”

  I couldn’t hide my fear, and Hollin came and placed a hand on my shoulder. “I know it must seem fast, but it’s for our happiness. It wouldn’t do for Smollings to know I was leaving.”

  My plan to save Erris seemed more unlikely by the moment, and my fate, all the more real. I was agreeing to run away with a married man! Where did that leave me?

  “We’ll leave without getting married?” I asked, baiting him yet again to reveal the truth.

  “We’ll marry on the ship. Plenty of people do.”

  “You mean, once you have me on the ship you wouldn’t have to marry me. There’d be nowhere else for me to go.”

  My words grew talons in the silence that followed. I should not have sounded so harsh.

  “Don’t you trust me?” Hollin said.

  “It’s only, I don’t think you understand my position, when I have nothing and you have everything, when your word would always be taken over mine because of your sex, your station, and your nationality. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but I want to be shown respect—to be a proper wife. A woman of Lorinar would never run away without getting married!”

  He put his hands around my arms and looked straight into my eyes. “Nimira, I swear I will make a proper wife out of you. But if we marry in town, word might get out. The day we set sail, we’ll marry, and if you like we can even have a proper wedding in Salcy; I still have family there.”

  His dark eyes were both sad and hopeful. I saw in them reflections of his thwarted dreams. I did pity him. Annalie was no longer the woman he had married, the woman with whom he had shared all his hopes. If I had loved him, all this might have been different.

  “My dear Nimira,” he said. “I would never wish to bring you shame.”

  I lowered my head, reluctant but relenting.

  He patted my shoulders. “There, now. No reason to be sad, I know it’s overwhelming, but we’re setting off on a great adventure. Go and get ready.”

  I nodded, and turned to pick up the song sheets I’d practiced with, like I meant to bring a few favorites with me. Hollin left in a rush; I supposed he had a lot to do.

  As soon as the door shut, I heard Erris’s fingers gently tap the piano keys, but I didn’t look up. I closed my hand around my throat. Sorrow wedged itself there.

  “Mmm. Mmm!” Erris made desperate sounds, and I finally forced myself to read his messages.

  DON’T GO. YOU DON’T LOVE HIM!

  “Oh, and what am I supposed to do? You can’t help me.”

  CAN’T STAND IT.

  I grabbed his hands. Solid as they were, they didn’t have much strength to resist me. “Stop it. Stop talking. I can take care of myself. I’ll run away if I have to. I have a little money.” Very little. Hollin hadn’t paid me yet. “I’m doing everything I can!”

  “Mm. Mm. Mmmm!” He moaned so loud I worried someone might hear, and finally I released his hands.

  NIM. PLEASE.

  “You can’t help me, Erris. I’m sorry.”

  He knew it. We had nothing else to say. His clockwork face could show no emotion, but I felt my own limbs tremble, thinking how he must be desperate to move, to rage, to grab me, to stop me, but he couldn’t do anything.

  Neither of us moved for ten clockwork clicks.

  LET US PART ON GOOD TERMS, he finally said.

  “Let’s not talk of parting yet!” I cried. “I won’t give up until I’m on that ship—”

  DON’T BLAME YOURSELF FOR FAILING THE IMPOSSIBLE.
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  “But you didn’t think it was impossible at first. Garvin didn’t, anyway. He told you to find Karstor, and even Karstor didn’t say it was impossible. I don’t know how to get you to Karstor, but—”

  HUSH, he spelled, his fingers falling soft on the keys. I WON’T SAY GOOD-BYE. I WILL WISH YOU HAPPINESS BEYOND YOUR HOPES.

  “You too,” I said, and then I thought what a ridiculous thing that was to say to someone in such a position. “We will meet again.” Someday. Somewhere. In the next life . . .

  He bowed his head a little, as he did at the end of a performance.

  I looked at him, but his eyes stayed lowered. I knew I must go. This was a good-bye, whether or not we said the word.

  I started for the door, and then I dashed back and looked into his eyes. He looked back, and as my eyes blurred with tears, I thought I saw the real man he had once been. The air took substance between us, it pressed on my heart, it tugged at my arms. We could never embrace with our arms, but for that moment, we embraced with our souls.

  I leaned in and kissed his rigid lips.

  “Mmm,” he said, his final word before he wound down, the spark dying from his eyes.

  I slid down to the ground and cried.

  20

  I knew those tears must be my last. I wouldn’t have a chance to cry again.

  Back in my usual quarters, I tried to pack, in case I was left with no choice but to go. I already had my old valise, of course, with Mother’s clothes and my old books, but someone had brought a second trunk in during the day and folded my new clothes into it.

  Space remained for other books, but I didn’t feel like carrying any of Hollin’s books with me. I didn’t want to take a scrap from Vestenveld, unless I could have brought Erris.

  I roamed the halls, sick at heart. I might block my tears, but I couldn’t replace them with joy, and hollows filled my soul.

  My footsteps brought me to Hollin’s father’s study. I had not entered that room since I’d taken paper from it, and I hardly knew why I entered it now. I wouldn’t be sorry to leave this room behind. The fairies sat waxen on their flowers. I thought of the living ones I had seen, the nocturnal butterflies—how they had glowed and danced over the fields. I wished I could wave my hand and grant them life, and in their dead eyes I saw a reflection of Erris, trapped in clockwork limbs forever.

  Hollin’s father was dead. There was no reason to keep the fairies here any longer. Hollin should have thrown these things away, and made Vestenveld his own. This room was proof that he didn’t even try. He told me he wished to be different, but it was all talk. He wouldn’t take action against Smollings even now. He would only run away, where Smollings and Karstor and fairy wars would no longer concern him.

  The coward! Had he ever cared?

  I shoved the curtains wide. Hollin’s father would have had a striking view of Vestenveld’s image wavering in the reflection pool. I pulled the window latch, but the frame didn’t want to let the window go. With the palm of my hand, I thumped it hard, each time with a great smack. My skin stung. I didn’t care if the servants heard me.

  The window flew open, and a flower-scented breeze played with a loose lock of my hair.

  I took the fairies under glass into my hands. Only the wooden base had any weight. I imagined they’d crumble like dried flowers if I touched them. Horrible dead things.

  With a great heave, I pitched them into the reflection pool. They landed in the shallows with just a small splash, and they were gone. Forever.

  I stared at the still waters so long that tears came to my eyes. I didn’t want to go on a ship with Hollin. I wanted to marry someone I loved. I wanted to free Erris. I wanted to be there the moment it happened—whatever happened.

  Even if the only fate left to him was to die, he still deserved that much, not this unnatural imprisonment. And he shouldn’t have to die alone. No one should. When Mother died, we had all been there. I had held her hand and felt her grip slacken. I didn’t want to hold my mother’s hand and watch her die, but I would have felt a thousand times worse if she had died without me.

  Karstor had implied that only the Lady, the Queen of the Longest Night, could grant Erris life without a body. Or maybe she could find and revive his body somehow. I didn’t know how it would work. Karstor also warned of the danger, but I was growing desperate. I wondered how one summoned her. Did one have to be a necromancer? What would she do if she came?

  Karstor said she was not unkind. Back in Tiansher, there was a painting of her in one of the palace halls, where she was smiling and carrying a beacon to lead the dead safely home.

  I skimmed Hollin’s father’s shelf, taking out a book I’d seen before: Mastery of Man: the Perils of Sorcery and the Summoning of Demons, Illustrated with 32 Color Plates, by the Reverend Abram Crane.

  “The underworld is ruled by a fairy known as the Queen of the Longest Night,” the book declared in chapter two. “All sinners, human and fairy alike, fall under the cruel sway of this treacherous creature.”

  An illustration showed a woman whose scowling face reminded me of the ukuki, the trickster spirits of Tiansher. She carried a sword aloft and I suddenly recalled the statue of the sword-bearing woman in the square the day I left New Sweeling. I had thought nothing of the statue that day, but now it seemed a sign.

  I read on. The Reverend Abram Crane continued page after page about the damnation that fell upon those who summoned the Queen, and how fickle she was about appearing: “She will only appear to those with the most urgent of needs, the darkest of hearts, the most wicked of souls.”

  Well, my need was certainly urgent, although I wasn’t sure about the rest. I needed a real book on necromancy, one that told me how to work the spell. But as the sun crawled into the treetops, I had not found one, and Hollin summoned me for dinner.

  Hollin brought maps to the dinner table, and talked of an itinerary that truly would make world travelers of us.

  He was so very happy when he talked of travels or animals or world monuments. “I packed six foreign language books, Nimira. We can practice on the ship; I’m sure we can find other travelers to speak with. That should be fun, I think.”

  “If I’m not seasick.”

  “You came across in steerage, I imagine?”

  I nodded, wishing to purge the memories of the hundreds of beds, the coughing and crying and snoring of my fellow passengers that kept me awake all night, the food I hardly ate and couldn’t keep down, the miserable stink of sweat and fear, some of it my own.

  “Bad memories, eh? Steerage isn’t fit for dogs. Well, even if you’re a little seasick this time around, I’m sure you’ll find it more pleasant. In first class we’ll have good food, music, and comfortable cabins. And new friends. Travelers are very cosmopolitan people. I’m sure you’ll charm them all and hear some fascinating stories. And we can sit on the deck and watch the sunset, or sunrise.”

  He looked at me hopefully, and when I produced a feeble smile in response, he went on, sounding ever more desperate to cheer me.

  “I hope to book us to sail right into Sormesen. They say it’s straight out of a fairy tale. The houses are painted bright colors and the sun shines three hundred days a year. A person can scarcely sleep, with all there is to do. I’m looking forward to the galleries . . . and the food, they say, is the best in the world, to say nothing of the wine.”

  Sormesen might have been paradise itself, but I knew I could never be content there.

  I still looked for necromancy books after dinner, but I found nothing. It seemed I had no choice but to attempt an even more daring plan. Karstor had said those who speak to the dead would know the Queen.

  I had to see Annalie.

  21

  Linza came to my room that night to dress my hair for bed. She hesitated at my door before she walked over and picked up the brush.

  “Are you really going away with Mr. Parry?”

  I shifted in my chair to face her, rather than my own wan reflection. “Actually, I
wanted to talk to you about that. You trusted me with the secret of Annalie’s fate, and now I need to put my trust in you. You know where her room is, don’t you?”

  “You want to see the mistress? Why?”

  I decided it was time to tell Linza the whole story. I thought she would have more sympathy than fear for Erris if she knew what he was, and I was right.

  “Poor man!” she gasped. “But what could Mistress Annalie do?”

  “I need to know how to summon the Queen of the Longest Night. I don’t know if she can tell me, but it’s the only chance I have right now.”

  “Well . . .” Linza glanced behind her. “Miss Rashten guards Annalie.”

  “But not all the time,” I pointed out. “I see her all over the house.”

  Linza nodded. “She likes to know everything that goes on.”

  “When does she sleep?”

  “It seems like she never does!” Linza said. “But I believe she sleeps from around midnight to four o’ clock, and then takes a rest in the afternoon. Her bedroom is right next to Mistress Annalie’s, though, and she has awfully keen hearing.” Linza rubbed her own ear, as if recalling a time when Miss Rashten had caught her at something.

  “Still, I’m willing to try, if you tell me where her room is. I’ll just have to be very quiet.”

  “I’ll take you there, miss,” Linza said.

  “I don’t want to put you in danger.”

  “I don’t want you to get lost up there and stumble into Miss Rashten’s room.” She grinned. “Besides, Mistress Annalie knows me. She might not let you in without a fuss, and that would surely wake Miss Rashten! I’ll come for you at half past midnight.”

  Half past midnight came and went, and Linza did not appear. I feared Miss Rashten had caught her skulking in the hall, but maybe she had only fallen asleep. I didn’t know how long I should wait for her before I tried to find Annalie myself. I still needed time to summon the Queen, after all.