Will Power

“Last week. Maybe earlier. You must have it. She needs it now and she said she’d never employ you again if it wasn’t. .”

“Now, let’s not be hasty,” the old woman cut in. “Your mistress’s name is. .?”

I glanced pointedly around the store. Several ladies paused in their perusal of false eyelashes and hairpieces and regarded this little scene with interest.

“My dear lady,” I began, as if offended, “surely you do not expect me to utter the name of so venerable a court lady as my mistress before common ears.” I leaned close to her. “She is a little. . sensitive. . about what time is doing to her beauteous features. Surely you would not have me. .”

“Certainly not!” exclaimed the shopkeeper. “But it would help if I knew. . You say she has employed our services before?”

“On a regular basis.”

“As a personal dresser as well as supplier?”

“Indeed,” I confirmed.

“And she is more advanced in years than say, myself?”

This seemed tough to imagine, but I nodded knowingly.

“Would I be correct in saying that her name began with-” Here she leaned close to my ear. As I struggled not to keel over at the stench of her perfume, she breathed the letter “W.”

“The very same,” I smiled, remarking to myself how easy this had turned out to be.

“Then I am scheduled to meet with her this afternoon.”

“Err. . yes,” I said, “or, rather, you were. She wants you to send this package to her today, though it seems my fellow the valet did not relay this information to you.”

“I think not.”

“It would not be the first time,” I said, sighing at the fallibility of servants. “But that is no matter. If you can compose the package now, then she will meet with you tomorrow instead of today and will pay you then.”

“At the usual time?” asked the shopkeeper.

“Half an hour earlier, please,” I said, for no particular reason.

I left the store with a parcel of brown paper, which I opened as soon as I got to a side street. Despite having to time my actions around the motions of passersby, it took me no more than five minutes to slip on Renthrette’s dress, powder my face after the courtly fashion, rub a little of the red grease on my lips, and don the ringlet wig. This last item was perhaps the most risky, but it was also the most essential. It was an odd sensation, returning to my days playing ladies on the stage, doubly so because I wasn’t actually on stage at all, was actually in an alley where being discovered could get me into real trouble, and it took me a few minutes to steel myself for my return to the main street. As soon as I slipped the tortoiseshell spectacles with their bluish lenses (such as I had been assured were “absolutely the first choice of all the right courtiers this season”) onto my nose, Will Hawthorne effectively vanished. My disguise wouldn’t stand careful scrutiny, particularly from someone who knew me, but I had spent the bulk of my theatrical apprenticeship playing women and had often been told that I did it well; better, in fact, than some actual women. I was never sure what that meant, but I took it as a compliment. And now, moving back through the elegant streets of Phasdreille, I clung to the idea like it was the banister of a steep and narrow staircase.

I reached the library and made straight for one of the guards monitoring the side entrance. He was a little taller than most of the “fair folk” and his limbs were heavier, more aggressively powerful-looking than the sinewy strength of the other troops. He caught sight of my rapid approach, but his gaze was blank. I touched the fringe of my wig self-consciously and proceeded.

Fishing into my stocking-padded cleavage, I produced a sheaf of official-looking papers marked with sealing wax. I was taking a chance, of course, but I hadn’t seen much devotion to learning outside the privileged circle of the court, despite the magnificence of the library. That a lowly sentry would be able to read seemed unlikely, and I might thus get away with the fact that what I was brandishing was actually the formal invitation to the king’s banquet, the same banquet at which I had so endeared myself to the Phasdreille elite.

The guard’s eyes stooped to my face expressionlessly.

“Lady Fossington,” I announced, modulating my voice and conscious that I was perspiring slightly. “I’m here on behalf of the Committee on Textual Rescription.”

I paused and gave him an expectant look as if this made my business clear. His brow wrinkled slightly and his mouth opened, but he said nothing while his eyes strayed to the document I was holding. I could tell at a glance that he was taking in the parchment and the official-looking seal rather than the words, so I held it up for him to get a better, but no more helpful, look.

As he did so, I kept talking in a rapid and slightly nasal manner. “At the second semiannual general meeting, the committee reviewed the minutes from the previous meeting and found certain items of business unresolved. The most major of these was the updating of the list of titles to be permanently erased from all but the Former Titles list. But my business today is more directly concerned with item four on the original meeting minutes-that is, what is now item 2b on the recent meeting agenda: Maintenance Subsistence Levels for Book Redirection and Clarification of Furnaces. The earlier think tank report on this matter suggested that said furnaces were not adequately monitored for the accumulation of post-incineration written matter detritus, which was directly impacting the efficiency of said furnaces in subsequent acts of textual modification by means of incandescence. According to the report, said accumulation was inversely proportional to said furnaces’ available volume and may have further repercussions correlating to issues of temperatural generative capacity. My task is to make detailed observations on the post-incineration condition of said furnaces in order to ascertain the necessity of further detritus removal operations.”

The blank look in the soldier’s eyes tried to hide, but it wasn’t going anywhere. He hesitated, trying to look engaged, then nodded. I pressed the advantage. “So if you would conduct me on a tour of the furnaces so that I can complete my examination, I’m sure that the library staff and the king’s palace will be appreciative.”

“Oh,” he said. “Right. Yes, ma’am.”

And I was in.

The next trick was to lose my guide. That might prove more difficult. The soldier chaperoned me everywhere I went and insisted on guiding me straight to the room I had already been in. He watched me as I poked around in the embers of the fireplaces, sifting through ash, and taking little scrapings of burned matter from the chimney lips with the point of my knife. Periodically I would pause to sniff significantly. Once I even tasted the gray-white powder, all the while scribbling meaningless words and figures on my sheet of paper. This clearly fascinated the trooper, and he showed no signs of leaving me alone for a second. We moved from room to room, seeing nothing I hadn’t already seen. I was in continual dread of bumping into Aliana or someone else who would be less accepting of my story.

“This is the last one,” said the guard as we entered a small circular chamber with a dead hearth in its center.

“What about the brass doors at the end of the corridor there?” I asked.

“There’s no furnace there,” he said. “This is the last one.” The look on his face was completely guileless. He was unaware that anything significant had been said. As far as he was concerned, he was telling the truth.

No furnace. So Aliana’s story about the source of the heat behind those doors had been a lie.

So what was through those doors, I wondered? I had to see, and I was fast running out of time. I had not been spotted, hadn’t run into Aliana, and, though I hadn’t knocked my absurd wig off, I also hadn’t learned anything, and the soldier was still gazing rapt at the way I was pawing through the cinders of all those Redirected and Clarified Texts. It made me nervous, having him watch so closely while I did nothing. I tried to distract him.

“Nice room,” I said, glancing around at the heavy timber beams and imposing stonework.

“Yes,” he said.

“Must have taken years to build,” I added, aimlessly making conversation until I could think of a way to get rid of him.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll be a mason when I retire from the army.”