Manticore rears red on their livery. “They’ll take you to Mistress Virulen.” She smiles and kisses me briskly on both cheeks. “Out you go. And remember—discretion and decorum, my dear!”
I embrace Aunt Minta, inhaling one last comforting whiff of her verbena and orange blossom perfume. Then I step out with the driving wight’s help, buffeted by the gusts that have chased us all the way down from High Street in Midtown. His grip is odd—one moment insubstantial, another firm as death. The Imperial Refinery just alongside the Tower makes and programs the wights to customer specifications, but the process of their making is a great trade secret. It’s said only the Empress knows how the wights are truly made. I’ve always thought of wights as mindless automata, but knowing the truth about the Elementals has made me question everything. The driver’s expressionless face flickers and then he drifts back toward the carriage as Aunt Minta calls to be returned to High Street. I’m left standing with no real answers.
The Night Emporium’s violet-swirled domes bloom over me, spanning half of the bridge that vaults the River Vaunting and joins Lowtown on the other side. Closer to Lowtown, there are gambling houses and other dens of iniquity, but on this side of the great bridge, we’re still firmly in Midtown. The arched gates are lit by twinkling everlights that flash like Piskel when he’s excited or happy. Various shop wights circulate through the crowd, offering samples of candied apples or eversilk ribbons. It seems a bit odd to me that a lady of such stature as Mistress Virulen would come here to seek Carnival gear, but perhaps she is bored of the Uptown boutiques and looking for a bit more local color.
I exhale a long, slow breath, approach the liveried guards, and hand them my invitation as instructed. Their appraising looks make me want to shrink back into myself, but I haven’t spent the past several days walking with a book on my head for nothing. I throw my shoulders back and say, “Take me to Mistress Virulen, please,” as if I’m giving a Scholar directions for finding a lecture in the labyrinthine Museum.
They turn in unison and begin shouting for the way to be cleared.
We pass through the arched gates with their fanciful lights and glimmering faces. People look askance and whisper behind their hands as I follow the guards. I wave away several wights before we enter Hooke & Smee’s, a ladies’ costume shop. The shop is empty of all but Mistress Virulen and a few of her retainers. She glances up from the fabric the seamstress wights have spread before her and rushes toward me across the honey- golden boards.
“Vespa,” she says, taking both my hands in hers. “I may call you that, mayn’t I?”
“Of course, my lady . . .” My voice doesn’t even sound like my own.
“Oh, stuff and nonsense, do call me Lucy. When we’re in intimate circumstances like this, of course.”
I nod, then blush when I realize I’ve forgotten to remove my bonnet.
Her eyes travel to it just as I reach for the gray ribbons. She clucks at me. “Wherever did you find
“I . . . that is to say . . . my aunt . . .” I stammer, as she swiftly unties it, lifts it off my head, and passes it to one of her attendants.
“We shall do much better for you by far.” She turns to her attendant and says, “Get rid of that dowdy thing, will you?”
The attendant bows and hurries off to do her bidding.
Lucy turns back to me, her dark eyes intent on my face, lifting her small, porcelain-perfect hand to brush at my temperamental curls. “Yes, I can see it. You will be quite the catch when I’m done with you.” She leans forward so only I can hear. “And so shall I when you’re done with me, eh?” she whispers, winking.
I swallow my stammering and simply nod. I try not to follow the progress of the brand-new bonnet out to the wastebin with my eyes. Both Aunt Minta and I had thought it the height of fashion when we bought it last week. Somehow, I know better than to say that to Lucy Virulen.
“Now, come,” she says, taking my arm and leading me down the long aisles toward where the seamstress wights still spread fabrics across the boards. “Let’s decide our Carnival theme.”
And so it begins. Eversilk, organza, batiste, yards of lace, gilt thread, and feathers of every kind and description. Lucy’s eyes light up at a pile of feathers so brilliant, I’m certain they must have once belonged to a Phoenix. I turn the cerulean pinions, watch them change to fiery gold under the shop lights. Definitely Phoenix. Sickness clenches at my gut, especially when Lucy practically leaps at the feathers, crying, “Yes! These will be just the thing!”
“They’re Phoenix feathers.” My voice is stiff with unspoken things.
She tickles my nose with one. It smells of embers and sorrow. “Of course I know that, dear. That’s why I want them. I shall attend the ball tricked out as a magnificent Phoenix before her ascent in flame. But we have been thinking too much about me. What would you like to be, Vespa?”
My gaze wanders helplessly across the sheen of fabrics and glittering thread. “Whatever you want me to be, Mistress.”
“Such a cautious creature!” She smiles, running her hands along the fabrics on the table. The seamstress wight blinks, caught between holding out a swatch of peacock-blue silk and some golden braid.
“With that hair and those eyes,” Lucy continues, “we must be careful. But that doesn’t mean we can’t still be dramatic.”
I nod. Aunt Minta often says that I’m not easy to dress because of my coloring. Therefore, I mostly keep myself to shades of gray, when I worry about it at all.
Lucy wanders down the table to where dark silk sparkles with silver threads, a swatch of night sky plucked from the clean air beyond the City walls. There’s a half-finished owl mask here; a few downy white feathers grace the edges of its hooked beak. I pray to the saints that no rare owl lost its feathers for this.
As if the saints would care. I’m beginning to suspect they don’t care about anything.
Lucy pounces on the mask and holds it up to my face. “Bewitching!” She smiles that infectious smile and I can’t help but return it. “How would you feel about going as the Strix, my dear?”
The Strix is a flesh-eating, owl-like creature, rumored to haunt the great rivers and caverns of the East. I’ve seen a stuffed one in the dustier vaults of the Museum, her feathers moth-eaten, her glass eyes vacant. But I imagine that if she had been preserved alive like the Sphinx or the Grue, she would have been very fearsome indeed.
“I’ve always found the Strix interesting,” I say carefully. I consider saying more about the one in the vault at the Museum or the Eastern expedition to capture her decades ago, but Aunt Minta has cautioned me not to speak too much of my work with Unnaturals.
“Very well, then,” Lucy says. “You’ll be the Strix and I shall be the Phoenix. What a glamorous pair we’ll make for Carnival!”
One of the shop proprietors—Mr. Hooke, I believe—sweeps up to us, bowing and making grand flourishes with his scarlet sleeves. With little more than a pause for breath, Lucy launches into detailed instructions which Mr. Hooke copies onto a gilt-edged pad with an elaborate quill, somehow managing not to stain his lacy cuffs with everink as he writes.
Before I know it, seamstress wights are pushing me off toward the dressing rooms, where they whisk off my gown and undergarments, leaving me in little more than my stockings and a cold breeze. They take my measurements, their fingers appearing and disappearing as if I’m looking at them through running water. They pin a swath of the starry silk here and there, hold up the owl mask, nearly blinding me with the feather tips. There’s a low murmuring between them not unlike language, but still unintelligible.
While I’m still blinking with shock, the measuring tapes, pins, and fabric swatches are swept away, my clothes restored to me, and I’m returned to where Lucy chats with Mr. Hooke near the coveted pile of Phoenix feathers.
I would very much like to ask Mr. Hooke how he came by them, though I fear he would be coy. Phoenixes are terribly rare, far too rare to be found in some Midtown shop. And yet, I know without a doubt that these feathers are the genuine article.
Lucy takes my arm before I can open my mouth. “Mr. Hooke, we must be off, but I trust you will produce gowns that will make us the envy of Carnival!”
“Indeed, my lady!” He bows to us with yet another flourish. “Of that you may be certain!”
Lucy turns us and I nearly stumble. “Grace, my dear,” she whispers, “grace even before these rabble.”
I look back at Mr. Hooke whose nose is still nearly sweeping the floorboards in his aristocratic bow.
“Rabble?”
