Wenathn broke the seal and read the letter inside.
'I don't know about this,' he said.
'You knew there would be a price for our assistance,' said Ironfoot. 'That someday the bill would come due.'
'But what you're asking,' said Wenathn. 'The repercussions.'
'You've read the letter,' said Ironfoot. 'It's signed by Everess and carries his impress.'
Wenathn smoothed the letter on his desk and reread it. 'From what I'm told, Lord Everess's stamp may not be worth much in a few days.'
'That's a chance you'll just have to take,' said Ironfoot. 'Though I imagine that if word got out about the means of your rise to power, your own stamp might not press paper soon either.'
Wenathn nodded. He was no fool.
'You and I both know that there are many on your council who would back this in an instant, especially with the full, written support of the Seelie government.'
'How long do I have to decide?' said Wenathn.
'I can stay at least until lunchtime,' said Ironfoot, putting his feet up on the chief high councilor's desk.
Faella was on stage, alone, performing the final movement of 'Twine' to a mostly empty house. The troupe had rebelled against her desire to present it earlier in the show, and it had been relegated to the dregs of the performance, the closing act performed after midnight, when most of the patrons had already left for the taverns or their beds.
It was a subtle piece, to be sure, and not what the Bittersweet Wayward Mestina was known for. Their audience wanted grand spectacles: ferocious battles, the machinations of kings, bawdy farces. These were what paid for the theater and the salaries of her employees and the outrageous Glamourists' Guild dues.
But 'Twine' was dear to her heart, and she was determined to perform it. For the most part she'd taken herself out of the other pieces, much to the chagrin of the audience. The clashes of swords and noblemen and half-dressed bodies were fine as far as they went, but as time went on, Faella couldn't help but see them as any more than what they were: mirages, fantasies to pass the time. 'Twine' was more than that, though she couldn't say what, exactly.
The dozens of red, gold, and orange strands whirled and spun in a ferocious ballet of longing and emotion until Faella, spent, wove them together into a bright braid of emotion and wound it around herself, where it exploded in a shower of sparks.
She bowed to scattered applause and left the stage, sweating. It was time for her to go.
Backstage, the mestines were removing makeup and costumes, lingering over bottles of cheap wine, laughing. She'd never felt more remote from them. It wasn't enough anymore. Nothing was ever enough.
She went to the theater office and went over the documents she'd prepared: assignment of title, bank slips, instructions. She was leaving the Bittersweet Wayward Mestina to the company as a whole. They would now be a self-owned collective. It could be a disaster, but she wouldn't be here to see it. She was moving on.
Over the past few months, her powers had only grown. She now found herself able to maneuver Elements and Motion, to work glamours of astonishing complexity, to do things that didn't seem to match any kind of Gift at all. To be honest, she wasn't sure what others meant by the Gifts. She'd only ever known Glamour, and had never thought of it as 'channeling' some raw element through a thing. There was only the thought, the desire, and the deed. She'd always assumed she didn't understand because she had no formal training.
But as her abilities increased she'd begun reading more, sneaking into the university libraries and working her way painfully through textbooks. She was no scholar, and little of what she read made any sense. But there was nothing in her reading that shed any light on her strange new talents. In fact, everything that she'd read seemed to indicate that much of what she was doing was impossible.
She'd even gone so far as to seduce a professor of natural philosophy in order to pick his brain on the subject, but he'd been far more interested in her more mundane talents, and hadn't been any help at all.
And with each passing day, the certainty that she was wasting her life in Estacana grew. That feeling that she was meant for greatness never left her. In her most fanciful moments, she dreamed that she was destined to heal the whole world of Faerie, just as she'd healed Rieger's knife wound.
Whatever it was she was meant to be, it wasn't the owner of a middling mestina in Estacana. She'd already booked passage on the mail coach for the City Emerald in the morning. The City Emerald was the center of the Seelie Kingdom, where every decision of importance was made, and she would find a way to insinuate herself into its movements, just as she'd found a way to do everything else she'd ever done.
